Clean Coal? Not ’till 2030.
May 28, 2008
During his campaign for the Presidency, George W. Bush pledged to commit $2 billion over 10 years to advance “clean coal” technology. Since then he’s carried out his promise, advocating the technology and future of its use, based on the assumption that we have a lot of it, and will continue to use it just because we don’t have a solid source of alternative energy. Of course that’s partly due to Bush allocating funds to clean coal efforts and not anything silly like solar or wind power.
Clean coal is a myth.
Read that last line again. It doesn’t exist. Not in the way you think it does, anyway. Clean coal’s supposed to work like this: Capture the carbon dioxide produced when coal burns and bury it underground, back where the coal came from. Most of the technology to do this is proven, and there are enough places underground to store the CO2 and keep it secure for thousands of years. That at least is the pitch for carbon capture and storage (CCS). Trouble is, the earliest possibility for deployment of CCS on a large commercial scale is not expected before 2030. And by then, the damage will be done.
The Department of Energy is currently seeking $648 million for “clean coal” projects in its 2009 budget request, “representing the largest budget request for coal RD&D in over 25 years.” Come on now. If we put that amount towards renewable, sustainable energy, we wouldn’t need to deal with all the dirty by-products of coal mining. Here’s a short list of what dirty coal does:
- Increased rates of disease – 24,000 people die prematurely each year due to pollution from coal-powered plants.
- 25% of our total CO2 emissions come from burning coal
- 10,000 miners have died from black lung disease between 1992 and 2002
- Mining requires a huge amount of water — 70 to 260 million gallons — every day.
- Coal pollutes seawater and fresh fish due to the mercury that’s released during mining. Because of this, 49 out of 50 states have issued fish consumption advisories.
- Coal kills freshwater streams and mountains (buried or damaged by blasted mountaintops). A tremendous amount of our natural resources are going towards coal mining!
- So much money diverted into “clean coal” programs when it could be going towards more useful programs. — from coal-is-dirty.com
Unlike coal, which you would need to re-stock constantly, solar and wind power will continuously flow in to systems set up to receive it. The only thing keeping us all from jumping on it right now is the prohibitive start-up cost, but once that’s paid off, it’s basically free and clean energy. In the long run, these systems will save money. Systems that use oil, gas, or coal will constantly need more resources to produce energy, so to keep investing in something like that when we could be investing in a one-time start up cost system is nonsense.
There is major propaganda right now advocating clean coal. Don’t be taken in! Even Obama is standing up for clean coal because he doesn’t know better. It is our job to reach as wide an audience as we can, to educate ourselves for our future. Spread the word, people! We need to wake up and take charge of our future. Don’t let dirty politicians dirty our world.
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I think that you have it competely wrong and that coal is already a clean source of energy if is really that bad would the earth have created it for use to use or is mearly morally wrong to use something that pollutes the enviromnet a tiny bit. Something else to think about is if we did’nt use coal you would’nt enjoy all the things that you so obivously do the internet being the first on that list and secondly running water. Not using coal is perpostrous It like saying we should’nt eat Mc Donalds or people in Phenoix should’nt have beatiful Golf course and wonderful lawns. I’m sure that you may not have all the facts do you know how big a part of the us economy is based in coal. Do you think people can afford to pay for higher energy costs Sustainable power is a myth without conventional energy we would’nt be able to Susitain our own population Sustainability needs to balanced on a knife edge with what will keep use alive. So go ahead you walk into someone house tell them they cant have any electricty or they have to pay double what its worth. Do you think that will solve anything besides getting a look like your the mad hatter from alice in wonder land maybe you should realize that the earth will be fine no matter what we do it has been here for millions of years and even nuclear devestation would leave only a blip on the earth history if humans go voluntarily extingted in the process well you wont be here to tell us I told you so no likes a sore loser but they espically dont like mad hatters proclaiming the truth and we know your right but hey lets have some fun as long as we are here
First off, thanks for your comment! I know my reply is months behind but I just got this blog back up
Coal comes from the earth, true, but coal in and of itself isn’t very harmful. No, it’s when it’s lit on fire that the real damage begins. Nor did I say it was morally wrong. I’m sure without coal, civilization would be far behind where we are right now.
My post was really about “clean” coal and how everyone’s been pushing for it when there’s been no real proof that it can be done. Of course the ones advocating it have something to gain from it as well…
Second, I don’t believe the “earth will be fine no matter what.” True it’s been here for millions of years but humans have been here for only a tiny fraction of that time… Did you know the earth’s population went from 1 billion in the 1900’s to over 7 billion today? Think about it, our population rose 700% in just the last 100 years! And really the start of the industrial age, with all our machinery, cars, etc started around that time as well… It has helped people survive and have more babies, true, but it’s come at a cost to our world.
I’d love to believe that the world will be just fine even if we carried on the way we were right now, but I sincerely don’t. The ice caps are melting, CO2 is rising, and if we don’t stop or reverse it we’ll be left with dangerous air to breathe, living in a bubble. That’s the last thing I want.