Nicholas J. DeIuliis, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Consol Energy in Cecil, encouraged his fellow executives in the coal industry to meet critics head on yesterday.

In a presentation titled, "Coal Industry Wake-Up Call," Mr. DeIuliis said contrary to the view of many, clean coal technology does indeed exist and that it has since the 1970s; that greenhouse gases make up only a sliver of the earth's atmostphere, and human-produced greenhouse gases only a sliver of that sliver; and that the United States needs "a true portfolio" of energy sources that includes fossil fuels along with nuclear and renewables.

His presentation was part of a "Coal Marketing Days" conference held Thursday and yesterday at the DoubleTree Hotel, Downtown. The conference, hosted by Platt's, an energy-focused division of publisher McGraw Hill, brought together executives, analysts and others in coal and related industries.

Mr. DeIuliis, who also serves as president and chief operating officer of CNX Gas, called to task some in the natural gas industry for seeking advantage in the controversy about "giveaways" to coal in the Waxman-Markey energy bill.

"America was built on achievement through self-improvement," he said, "not through attacks and propaganda against your competitors."

Expanding on his presentation in an interview, Mr. DeIuliis said, "When you look at prior pollutants that the industry had to tackle -- acid rain, ozone, particulate and mercury -- each and every time the regulations or the desire from the public was to reduce emissions. And the coal industry and the power industry responded to that ...the way they responded was the development and application of clean coal technology."

In similar fashion, he said, the industry can reduce carbon emissions from coal using existing technology.

"If you look at all the individual pieces of technology that would need to be put together, they're all there," he said. "The only thing we haven't done is, we haven't brought all of those links together and integrated them to show that they can work in a coal-fired power plant."

"All you need to do is focus the resources over the next 10 years," he said. "This country's CO2 will drop while the utilization of coal and natural gas will rise."

But even as he asserted that the technology already exists for reducing carbon emissions from coal, he challenged the view that such emissions threaten the planet. Comparing the earth's atmosphere to a 55-gallon drum, he said the increase in atmospheric carbon in the past 250 years would be the equivalent of four teaspoons, less than one of which was added by humans.

Legislation winding its way through Congress will have negligible effect on emissions because of its narrow focus on power plants and automobiles, and on the U.S. alone, he said.

"There's minuscule benefit tied to either Waxman-Markey or Boxer-Kerry," he said.

Regarding the push for climate change regulation at the global level, he said, "The G-20 is a very interesting example of how important electricity is to the developing world.

"If you look at nations like China and India, they have figured out the fact that as electrification increases in a society, life expectancy increases, infant mortality decreases, quality of life increases.

"Once an India or a China gains access to affordable electricity, they are not going to slow that process down or turn back the clock. And we shouldn't blame them."

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