Mickelson: A number of people emailed me this question. You mentioned clean coal. What the heck is that?
Pawlenty: Ha ha. In South Dakota, they were willing to put up a coal plant that had the best technology of today. We approved it because they needed to run the lines through Minnesota. And it was the best of coal technology as it exists today -- or back then, 2010. And within thirty days or so of us approving that project, the Obama administration put a hold on it. And the investors said we’re not going to have this much delay and this much problem. They fled and the project got killed. So clean coal, I think, can be defined as, we need to use coal, but we...if someone wants to come forward and invest in the best-of-class technology as it exists today and build a coal plant, I think that’s something we should be inclined to do.
Mickelson: Here in Iowa we pulled the plug on one just a few months ago.
Pawlenty: Well they’ve pulled the plug all over, Jan, but there is...
Mickelson: Same way with nukes. You can’t get a nuclear power facility started. Some people are thinking about it and pre-collecting some of the funds to build a modular nuclear power facility. Would you encourage that, if you had that opportunity, at least to ponder it?
Pawlenty: Well, you know, other countries do this. By modular, what I take you to mean is this: there are certain packages or pre-existing technologies that have already been approved in other places and they don’t have to be approved from scratch every time they come through the system.
Mickelson: And they’re smaller-scale.
Pawlenty: And they’re smaller-scale, and so they’re repeatable, scalable, and you can bring them through the process without having to reinvent the wheel every time. I think it’s a good idea.
Mickelson: But as you said earlier, we should let the market decide. If the market-only were involved in energy choices, would nuclear power be on the scale? Which do you think would be the most economic, top to bottom, if the marketplace-only...
Pawlenty: I think the answer to that, going forward in the near and intermediate term, is probably going to be natural gas. And it’s here. We can Americanize it. It burns cleaner than coal, obviously. It’s less controversial than nuclear and we’ve got a boatload of it.
Mickelson: We already have something of a delivery system.
Pawlenty: We already do. And by the way, some of these old coal plants, if people choose, and think it’s economically viable, they can be converted to natural gas. We did that in Minnesota to some of our old coal plants. It reduced mercury emissions, SO2/NOx emissions. And it was a successful conversion from what I call old coal to a cleaner, better, more available and frankly more affordable energy source.
