What Exactly is Clean Coal?

Dec 31

Written by: momohpaul
12/31/2008 11:30 AM

Over the summer, we all bore witness to one of the most elaborate marketing fabrications of 2008-the spin campaign by the American coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) to paint coal as “clean.” ACCCE is sponsored by 48 coal and utility companies with obvious interest in the sustained use of coal. I bet you all remember the “I believe” ads. aired on major television and cable stations. Even president-elect Obama used the phrase, “clean coal,” throughout his campaign. ACCCE spent $45 million on this campaign, so what exactly is clean coal? What commercially viable technologies exist today permitting the use of the “clean coal” phrase?

The answer, after looking around is short, NONE! Yes, coal is cleaner today than it was 30 years ago and research aimed at carbon sequestration, the most popular of which is the so-called Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), is currently being performed by the coal industry and the Department of Energy (DOE) but the capacity of current practical greenhouse gas (GHG) sequestering/capture technologies pale in comparison to the total amount of CO₂ emitted by coal and utility companies. The fore-mentioned industry is responsible for an alarming 27.2% of total U.S. GHG emissions. Now before you jump off your horses, I recognize CCS can prevent up to 85% of GHG emissions but this number is just an estimate of the potential of CCS. In fact, ACCCE itself admitted CCS technology is 10 to 15 years away. CCS technology, as it stands today, requires as much energy to implement as that produced from coal itself; resulting in zero net energy gain.

Even more alarming is the under-funding of CCS research. ACCCE, over the course of several years, would have invested $3.5 billion in CCS research. This number is nowhere near the amount needed to make CCS a viable option in a decade or two. The International Energy Agency (IEA) predicted $20 billion will be needed for CCS research. For those who think $3.5 billion is a reasonable investment on CCS R&D by the ACCCE members, consider this, analysis by the Center for American Progress (CAP) found ACCCE member companies netted $57 billion in profits in 2007 alone. Yet only $3.5 billion is devoted to R&D for several years.

Unlike many anti-coal activists, I am not for the discontinued use of coal. Practically speaking, to attain current U.S. energy independence goals, it will be unwise to abandon a domestically abundant and widely used energy source. My qualm lies with the use of shameless spin and blatant misinformation to push an agenda. This tactic was used by the out-going administration for eight years and see how desperate and embarrassed it has gotten the U.S. In addition, use of the “clean coal” phrase dismisses the urgency of the global warming crisis. If nothing else, it distorts the opinion of the “average Joe”-who consequentially perceives the coal emission problem a trivial; but it not! Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change-an international, Nobel Price-winning body, ominously predicted irreversible environmental consequences if nothing serious is done about GHG emissions by 2012. Such a perilous prediction must not be diluted by commercial spin.

I have so far only concentrated on GHG emissions, but other problems exist with coal; it is the largest source of mercury-proven to negatively affect metal development in children-but this is for another day. So the next time you witness the paradoxical use of the phrase, “clean coal,” remind everyone around you of the travesty of the phrase in of itself.

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99 comment(s) so far...

I found this website dedicated to debunk the myth of "clean coal." Enjoy!!!!

By deltaman on 1/2/2009 1:02 PM

the link to the site I mentioned previously is: www.coal-is-dirty.com/who_we_are

By deltaman on 1/2/2009 1:03 PM

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