With coal under attack by environmentalists and getting the brushoff in Copenhagen, the fuel's biggest trade group is offering new evidence that research into cleaner coal pays rich dividends.

A new study funded by American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity argues that taxpayers get more than their money back from government spending into technologies that makes coal-fired power plants more efficient and less polluting. It finds a cumulative return on investment of 13-to-1 in the later years of current programs.

Although analysts and environmentalists question some findings of the report, it is likely to bolster arguments the lobbying group uses as it fights for more help for coal in climate legislation.

"There is one certainty, and that is that the federal government will regulate carbon emissions in the near future," ACCCE spokeswoman Lisa Camooso Miller said. "This report supports our efforts to assure federal government support for clean coal technologies on a commercial scale, in that it provides a good return on the investment."

Coal is one of the hottest subjects in the debate over climate policy. Environmental groups see it as a nemesis in terms of the carbon emissions blamed for climate change. Coal backers argue that coal must be kept in the equation to meet the country's growing energy needs and keep electricity costs low at the same time. They have pushed for more research into technologies that could capture and sequester carbon dioxide emissions. But at international talks in Copenhagen, negotiators have decided not to allow countries to invest in carbon capture and storage as a way to offset emissions, the Wall Street Journal reported today.

The new coal report, from economic research firm Management Information Services Inc., does not look specifically at research into ways to capture and store coal's carbon emissions. Instead, it examines existing programs that make coal plants burn more efficiently and produce less environmental pollutants like nitrous and sulfur oxides. But the report is written with carbon capture and storage, or CCS, in mind.

"These findings have implications beyond the [clean coal technology, or CCT] program," the report says. "Based at least in part on the success of the CCT program, the federal government is currently initiating major carbon control and sequestration (CCS) R&D, technology, and investment programs to address climate change concerns.

"The findings reported here with respect to the costs and of the federal government's CCT program indicate that federal CCS investments will also produce significant benefits and will repay costs many times over," the report says.

The report also notes that power plants using the clean coal technology reduce greenhouse gas emissions because they burn less coal.

Analysts and environmentalists, however, said it won't be clear for some time whether carbon capture and sequestration can be economically viable.

"A good deal of caution is appropriate about this technology," said Lee Lane, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. "Should it succeed, it would be a big deal. It could make coal an environmentally friendly energy source.

"That may take a long time," Lane added. "It could cost a lot of money."

Any calculation about the benefits of carbon capture and sequestration is premature, said Joe Romm, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

Sam Thernstrom, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, questioned why federal money should be used on efforts to clean up coal-fired power plants.

"The long-standing principle in these matters has been that the polluter pays," Thernstrom said. "The polluter is allowed to pass their costs on to consumers."

Thernstrom, however, said he sees more support for the argument that success with the current cleaner coal program points to the need to invest federal money in carbon capture and storage technologies.

"We're trying to invent an entire new energy system," Thernstrom said. "Putting all of that on the private sector," he said, might not produce results as quickly as would federal funding on innovation.

"The world is going to keep burning a lot of coal for a long time," Thernstrom said. "Investments in CCS make sense."

Although the report also is being released as negotiations are under way in Copenhagen for a worldwide climate treaty, ACCCE said the timing was coincidental.

"The timing is more serendipitous than anything else," Miller said. "We knew there would be a natural synergy between the report and the discussions in Denmark."

Cleaner coal programs examined

The report looks at the Department of Energy's Clean Coal Power Initiative, Clean Coal Technology Development Program and Power Plant Improvement Initiative.

The report notes that at present, Clean Coal Power Initiative is the only active program, with the others having completed projects. The Clean Coal Power Initiative, however, did not receive money for 2010 in the spending bill funding DOE. The study began in April, and at that time, the researchers knew that the Clean Coal Power Initiative had not been funded for 2010. They used dollar figures from the existing program.

The study looks at the programs from 2000 forward. It estimates that from 2000 through 2020, about $17 billion would be spent on the programs, with government and industry splitting the cost. That figure uses 2008 dollars. Over the same time period, the study says, there will be $111 billion in economic benefits.

Right now, the report says, every dollar spent on technologies to clean coal-generating power plants provides $1.70 in benefit. By the year 2020, there will be a cumulative return of $13 for every $1 put into the work, it says.

"Consumers will be surprised to learn that for every dollar the government invests in clean coal technology research and development, the American taxpayer gets $13 in benefits," said Joe Lucas, ACCCE senior vice president of communications. "And as work toward developing programs to capture and store greenhouse gas emissions, this type of investment will be more important than ever to the American taxpayer as we work to ensure that can reduce emissions and still maintain access to affordable, reliable electricity produced by American coal and other domestic fuels."

Taxpayers see a benefit through lower electricity rates that come as a result of the programs to make plants more efficient, ACCCE officials said. Benefits to companies that own the power plant are passed along to workers and to state and local governments through tax revenues generated by the work on power plants and taxes paid by workers, said Roger Bezdek, president of economic research firm Management Information Services Inc., which prepared the report.

The DOE programs, which have cost-sharing agreements with industry, develop technologies that help power plants burn coal more efficiently, Bezdek said. That means they use less coal to make the same electricity or use the same amount of coal and generate more power from it.

The cost benefits that the study calculates come as a result of plants not having to install obsolete and more expensive equipment, plants using less fuel, plants avoiding penalties for their nitrous and sulfur oxide emissions, lower plant operating costs, and U.S. companies exporting the technologies overseas.

"The benefits of the [clean coal technology] program vastly exceed the costs, and this favorable relationship increases in magnitude over time," the report says. "That is, the CCT program represents a cost-effective investment for DOE, for industry, and for the nation as a whole."

All about jobs?

The report also talks about jobs connected to deployment of the technologies. In the current year, it says, there are 30,000 jobs. By 2020, the report says, the work will create more than 100,000 jobs. Those jobs would include everything from carpenters, electricians, painters and truck drivers to civil engineers, computer systems analysts, and construction supervisors and managers.

The study does not calculate any monetary benefit from those jobs but talks about the significance of those employment opportunities.

"These are predominately manufacturing-oriented, well-paying jobs, which are of critical importance to the United States," the study says.

It would be incorrect to consider jobs as a benefit created by the work, said Lane with AEI.

"That's a cost, actually," Lane said. "Those are resources of people working on this who are often very highly skilled people ... those people could be working on something else." There is the potential that other work those people could be doing "could create larger benefits for society," Lane added.

While economists have debated where jobs should be considered a benefit in analyses, to government officials they clearly are important, Bezdek said.

"They consider that is not the only rationale, an important rationale," Bezdek said. "It's all about jobs, jobs, jobs. To say it's not a benefit or not important certainly is unrealistic."

The report speaks in fairly glowing language about the nexus between the cleaner coal plant technologies and the benefits to consumers.

"These estimates are likely conservative," the report says of the financial benefits. "A wide and credible body of research indicates that the availability of reliable, relatively inexpensive energy -- such as that provided by electricity from coal plants -- is beneficial because it increases people's wealth and standards of living."

ACCCE paid Management Information Services for the report, but Bezdek said that did not influence the findings.

"Sometimes our clients are very unhappy with the results we produce," Bezdek said.