What’s All This I Hear About Clean Coal?
Ok, so it is bad enough whenever the Governor of Alaska says “clean, green natural gas”, but it is really bad whenever I hear a politician bring up “clean coal.” As if there were such a thing…
Coal has got to be the dirtiest of ways we get electricity. It not only destroys the land whence it was mined, but the nasty stuff that is included in coal is just nasty. Coal is a big reason we have mercury poisoning our fish and pregnant women, coal also emits lots of warming carbon dioxide and that lovely smog that hangs over our cities. And remember acid rain? Yeah, coal causes that, too.
Lately though I keep hearing all about this carbon sequestration plan that will magically render coal clean. If only it were that easy.
My first question is who is it clean for? The miners? Didn’t think so.
Did you ever hear of Futuregen? The plans for a new, clean coal technology-using power plant in Illinois were scrapped when the DOE figured out the true costs and nixed paying the bills. So, even if the technology does exist, it is so cost-prohibitive that many experts say the technology will not be commercially viable until 2020 or later. That means that whenever you hear McCain or even Obama talk of clean coal it is still in its pipe dream stage. Although I have a feeling that Obama is not really that into clean coal or expanded nuclear power, he just cannot come across as “anti-American” i.e. Anti-American mining companies and jobs.
If you want a bit more background on coal and how it should have been made obsolete decades ago, you can check out the Sierra Club’s Coal is Not the Answer campaign. It is a good start, but you should never rely on any one source for information. Do some research for yourself and you will be surprised how far away clean coal actually is. Just yesterday, an Australian news organization published the warnings of the International Energy Agency that clean coal technology is “not progressing.”
clean coal, governor, Alaska, McCain, Obama, coal, mining, acid rain, carbon dioxide, mercury, global warming, dirty, fossil fuel, Sierra Club, FutureGen, carbon sequestration, pollution, smog
October 24th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
[...] The Stream Buffer Zone rule has been around since Reagan days, so why revise it now? Is it because maybe coal companies are more eager than ever to continue to destroy mountains in order to get to that sweet, sweet coal? Huh, what market mechanisms would make it worth their while to mine coal from a site that the EPA claims will be more expensive to mine due to the OSM’s proposed new rules and enforcement? Maybe that coal’s price has gone up, and the coal companies will still make money on the site? Or is coal perhaps running out in other mines and new mines are needed? Oh, but wait, coal is, like, totally abundant according to the industry. No need to develop other energy sources, coal will last forever. [...]
November 10th, 2008 at 2:34 am
This is an important information “Coal has got to be the dirtiest of ways we get electricity. It not only destroys the land whence it was mined, but the nasty stuff that is included in coal is just nasty. Coal is a big reason we have mercury poisoning our fish and pregnant women, coal also emits lots of warming carbon dioxide” to remember.
November 11th, 2008 at 1:12 am
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November 11th, 2008 at 11:49 pm
[...] coal mine? Don’t I always write about how dirty coal is? Why would anyone want water from a former coal [...]
November 28th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
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December 3rd, 2008 at 2:46 pm
[...] makes carbon sequestration a silver bullet? No one can say with any degree of certainty that trapping carbon dioxide underground would stay [...]
December 5th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
[...] have complained in the past about the Clean Coal ad campaign. So-called clean coal is not an economically viable alternative to simply allowing all [...]
January 9th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
[...] if the Coal Industry had spent all those clean coal advertising dollars on building better containment areas for the enormous amounts of toxic waste that clean coal is [...]
March 26th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
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