How Clean Is Your Coal?

This election year, with the current economic woes and energy crisis, there has been much talk of stopping the largest transfer of wealth in the history of the world. Just in case you’ve missed it, the particular transfer all the talking heads are referring to is America’s dependence on foreign oil.
Other than a disappointing role for alternative clean energy sources like wind and solar power in our nation’s future, the only thing the politicians can agree on is a larger use of “clean coal” in our nation’s energy supply.

The general understanding of coal usage in the United States is that it is anything but clean. In fact, there’s a strong argument that coal may be the least clean source of energy that America uses.
Along with being one of the primary human causes of global warming, releasing an average of 3.7 million tons of CO2 a year, coal-burning power plants release a whole smorgasbord—or rather smog-as-bord—of other nasty chemicals into the environment.

Chemicals like mercury (Hg), nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO), Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs), arsenic (As) and sulfur dioxide (SO2) contribute to effects like smog, acid rain, depletion of the ozone, particle pollution, and soot, and have been shown to cause a range of negative health effects in humans.

But we’ve cleaned up coal, right? Well, while “clean coal” may be cleaner than “dirty coal,” many environmentalists consider the term misleading. Clean coal relies on a variety of methods to filter out pollutants and increase efficiency in coal burning. For example, Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), one of the new, more promising clean coal technologies, will probably play a big role in the future of coal energy here and in Europe (Small scale trials are being conducted in countries in the EU).

CCS works by removing carbon before combustion, and piping it deep underground where it will presumably stay for thousands or millions of years. CCS is a step in the right direction. However, it will raise the cost of energy, is of lower efficiency, and runs a slight risk (of varying severity depending on who you ask) of leaking the carbon back into the atmosphere anyway.

Along with CCS there are other clean coal technologies in their infancy such as Post Combustion Capture (PCC) and capture systems for other harmful pollutants.

If we’re going to be stuck burning coal, we may as well burn clean coal. The danger is that there is only limited funding and research, and massive CCS costs will probably be at the expense of more environmentally sound sources of power. Add to that the fact the clean coal won’t realistically be clean for many years to come and clean coal starts to sound more moronic than oxy-moronic.

Let’s not let ourselves get thrown-off by the latest Washington buzz words and remain focused on improving our environment.

For More Information

http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/coalvswind/c02c.html
http://www.sierraclub.org/cleanair/factsheets/power.asp
http://www.cjr.org/the_observatory/clean_coal_and_the_campaigns.php
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/07/29/carbon.capture/index.html