No such thing as Clean Coal
By Karina | March 9, 2009
Last week the Coen Brothers (of such landmark film fame as Fargo and The Big Lebowski) released a video in cooperation with Reality Coalition that has taken the internet by storm – it’s a humorous look at clean coal, and while simplistic, it’s pretty effective. Go ahead – take a break to go look!
See, the coal lobby has been advertising heavily lately in support of so-called “clean coal technology.” You can see clips of some of them on the Maddow Show here, or you can hop right into the fire and check out some ads in their entirety. (Including some ads including President Barack Obama, too – part of his agenda is to”Develop and Deploy Clean Coal Technology,” though this is listed after “Deploy the Cheapest, Cleanest, Fastest Energy Source – Energy Efficiency.” To counter those ads, The Reality Coalition has released a couple of videos pointing out that clean coal techology is really a misnomer. Here’s the first one they released, back in December.
The Reality Coalition (which is a joint project of the Alliance for Climate Protection, League of Conservation Voters, Natural Resources Defense Council, National Wildlife Federation and Sierra Club) states on their about page that “In reality, there is no such thing as “clean” coal in America today. Coal cannot be called ‘clean’ until its CO2 emissions are captured and stored safely.” But I have to say, this really isn’t going far enough. To start with, I don’t believe carbon capture (or sequestration) is the way to go [please see my reaction photo on the Climate Change Exhibit post!]. It allows people to think that we can continue on with business as usual energy use without worrying about efficiency or conservation, while using technologies that may not be safe. For example – there’s talk of storing carbon in the oceans, but the oceans are becoming more alkaline and that is impacting their health already. There’s more talk about storing the carbon underground and this is one way to do it, but the news that the mega-dams in China were actually a major cause of the earthquakes that recently killed so many people reinforces that we don’t really know enough about geotechnology and seismic activity to make these techniques safe.
Also, clean coal is “clean” because it’s been washed to remove mineral impurities – like mercury – which are environmental pollutants during the burning process. (Here’s some information on the entire clean coal process.) This doesn’t get rid of the toxic impurities, it just sidelines it to another form at which point it will have to be dealt with – and for a worst-case example, let’s consider the Kingston TN coal ash spill that occurred in December 2008, which covered property and rivers with toxic ash that had been stored on-site.
It’s well documented that Team Tiny Choices is on the side of conservation and efficiency. (And don’t forget our love of Jimmy Carter!) I think it’s important to keep that in context for a discussion about coal and carbon sequestration – for example, “If each American replaced only one conventional 60W bulb with a 13W ENERGY STAR-labeled CFL, it would prevent the burning of 30 billion pounds of coal, and save $8 billion in energy costs.”
So, have you changed out your lightbulbs yet? Any experience with coal or clean coal?
[[Photo of a W. VA power plant from flickr user Wigwam Jones' via creative commons license.]]
Topics: Activism | 3 Comments »
However any existing coal plant that presently burns coal will be able to burn liquid coal too.
That engineers will be called upon to develop photovoltaic technology or will be involved in projects using this technology.
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