There's No Such Thing as Clean Coal

An op-ed reprinted from Wednesday's San Francisco Chronicle...

If you are a politician running for national office -- or a coal or utility executive -- the notion of "clean coal" is alluring, much like pledging to lower taxes without cutting services. Like other campaign promises, however, citizens are well advised to seek the truth before committing.

During their recent debates, neither the presidential nor the vice presidential candidates dared admit the truth: There is no such thing as clean coal. Despite years of research and billions in government subsidies, not a single commercial coal plant in the United States can capture and store its greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, many scientists and even coal utility executives say the technology is at least a decade away. For policymakers and others concerned about climate change, the real question is not whether coal can be made clean, but whether we should even try.

Clean coal can mean many things to many people. Until recently, the phrase was often used to describe various processes to reduce air and water pollution caused by mining and burning coal, such as installing scrubbers on smokestacks to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions that cause acid rain. But the industry's biggest problem is that coal is the country's largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. So now clean coal usually refers to carbon capture and sequestration, an attempt to capture a plant's carbon emissions and store them underground, permanently, rather than releasing them into the atmosphere to contribute to global climate change.

The biggest challenges of carbon capture for the U.S. coal industry pertain to scale and cost, both of which are huge. Researchers at MIT estimate that if less than two-thirds of the carbon dioxide from U.S. coal plants were captured and compressed for storage, the collective volume to be stored underground "would about equal the total U.S. oil consumption of 20 million barrels per day."

Building an infrastructure to accomplish this would not be cheap. The Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory found that adding carbon capture to existing coal plants would increase the cost of electricity generation by 81 percent. This includes neither the rising cost of coal, nor the heightened cost of new coal plant construction, which has surged by more than 130 percent since 2000.

Assuming these challenges can be met, then what? Coal will still be dirty. The American Lung Association estimates that pollution from coal-fired power plants triggers 550,000 asthma attacks and 38,000 heart attacks annually, helping to cause an estimated 24,000 Americans to die prematurely each year. Coal combustion is also the country's largest source of mercury poisoning and releases more than five dozen different types of hazardous air pollutants.

And don't tell the residents of Appalachia that coal is clean. Mountaintop removal coal mining has flattened 450 mountains and buried more than 700 miles of rivers and streams in one of the country's most beautiful regions.

Rather than perpetuate our country's dependence on dirty energy, we can rejuvenate our economy with a transition to truly clean and renewable energy resources. Each year, the price of coal soars, while the costs of solar and wind decline. A report prepared for the California Public Utilities Commission earlier this year estimated that clean coal plants would cost $.1732 per kilowatt hour, compared to $.1265 for utility-scale solar power and just $.0891 for wind. Moreover, an analysis of more than a dozen independent reports studying the impacts of clean energy on employment found that wind power produces up to three times as many jobs as coal per unit of power produced. Rooftop solar produces seven to 10 times as many jobs.

"Clean coal" is both an oxymoron and an excuse policymakers use to avoid developing a responsible energy policy. Every dollar spent on a clean coal infrastructure is a dollar better invested in energy efficiency and renewable energy.

Michael Brune is the executive director of Rainforest Action Network and the author of Coming Clean -- Breaking America's Addiction to Oil and Coal," (Sierra Club Books, 2008).

Comments

[larry278]

Nukes or coal either way to generate energy is dangerous. We are playing Russian roulette with an automatic pistol with nuke or coal generated energy. Presently clean coal is an oxymoron. In theory we can control emissions from burning coal to generate energy. Seting up pilot plants will be expensive & we will have to improve the technology constantly. It will be expensive. If we get cleaner coal burning power plants we will have to keep up on the maintanance, no deferred maintenance. It will be expensive. If we neglect maintenence & refitting coal burning power plants often, we'll get more pollution, acid rain, lung diseases. Increased levels of pollution decreases the quality of life, shortens & ends lives; that has a price.
Nukes leave us with the problem of storing spent fuel. Check the half-life of nuclear fuel. Finding a safer place to store spent nuke fuel requires finding a site that is sparsely populated. There is the NIMBY factor & the problem of safely transporting spent nuke fuel from the plant to the storage site. Any safer way to transport spent nuke fuel is going to be expensive & risky. We humans often make mistakes. Remember 3 Mile Island & Chernobyl(sp?)? There are going to be accidents.
We may get cleaner coal generated power & cleaner nuke plants & storage sites but that's it All we get is cleanER & at a very high price.

[markie1111]

ain't this the truth. there is no way coal is ever gong to be clean. from extraction to finished product.

[minervoice]

As a coal miner who is also a progressive, I am so tired of seeing these kinds of screeds against my livelihood and the means I have to put food on the table for my family. No such thing as clean coal? How about no such thing as large scale wind and solar electricity generation that truly will replace power generated from coal -- not only now but in an ever-more-power-hungry future?

And let's please not forget the jobs of over 100,000 people directly employed in the coal industry, the 300,000 dependents of those people, and the 600,000 - 800,000 people who live in communities that depend on coal production to provide even the most basic services. Yes, we're rural folks who don't know Mission Street from 8th Avenue, but we matter.

Finally, please don't tell me about how many more jobs California estimates will be created from wind and solar. I don't want to move to California, nor should I have to. But even if those jobs are available where I live in Appalachia, how much will they pay? Will they be union jobs like I've got now, at $22+ per hour with health care and a real pension? I seriously doubt it.

Coal provides a part of the solution for our nation's energy future and jobs in some of the most rural, most economically challenged areas of America. Blinding ourselves to the possibility of carbon capture and storage is negligent in the extreme.

[lifejunkie]

CHANGE doesn't mean.. Hey, we don't need you anymore now you're on your own. Not if you are a true democrat. We are in this together. "Minervoice" you having a job is as important as any of us having a job. It's the job, not you that we need to change!!
It is all of our responsiblity to be as honest as we know how and to use our talents and intellect for the betterment of us all. Being honest starts with the reality that there is no such thing as CLEAN COAL. There is no devised solution for storing NUCLEAR WASTE safely. There are many illusions that spew in to our lives.
Minervoice... You're voice is important.. PLEASE KEEP EDUCATING!!!

[white1]

Finally, someone has written a piece that states the obvious. If coal were such a good deal, we'd all still be using it to heat our homes. I once thought the auto industry was the most reactionary in the country. I'm beginning to believe the energy industry might be worse.

[degenerate1991]

"we'd all still be using it to heat our homes."

Odds are, you still do. At least you do if you use electricity to heat your home. 70% of US electricity is produced by coal. While solar, wind, etc can be used to generate electricity, only coal or nuclear can be used to produce a consistent, baseload level of generation. Nuclear, while much less polluting, is also vastly more expensive than coal. In the short term (next 100 years or so), coal is an ideal solution for generating electricity compared to the expense of the alternatives.

[Badbone]

How about cleanER coal? We are heavily invested in coal now. Doesn't it make sense to use and improve the infrastructure we've got, instead of tearing it all out and starting new?

[RRonin]

I daresay that someday there could be a truly "clean coal " method of producing energy, but it would probably be cheaper and easier just to convert the nation to solar/wind/geothermal/ or whathaveyou.....

[KoreanWarVet]

I'll believe in clean coal when I see coalminers dressed in whites.

[Krikkit]

On this one issue you are completely wrong -- sort of. There is a process developed at the one of the universities in Pennsylvania twenty years ago that takes coal and turns it into methane gas. Like other sources of methane, when burned it is "clean" in the sense that it doesn't produce hydrocarbon soot. However, burning it produces just as much carbon dioxide as burning coal. In that sense it isn't clean any more than traditional natural gas.

So when politicians talk about "clean coal" they are talking about gassification and converting power plants to burn this source of fuel instead of coal dust. The bigger issue is the development and implementation of carbon capture, an untried technology. Even if carbon capture and clean coal work, these are only stopgap measures. We need new energy sources.

[KillTheMessenger]

Wait... they take coal and make methane. For that they need hydrogen. Just where in the world does the hydrogen come from? And how is it generated without any additional energy input?

Just wondering... got a link?

[research]

Coal gasification has been used for decades. It marginally improves efficiency, it's a good thing, but expensive, and does not solve the underling problems with Coal: mountain top removal environmental devastation and water table contamination; Mercury, radon and uranium generation; and CO2 release, possibly catastrophically with sequestration.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasification#History

[Kassandra]

Thank you. And I really don't watch to watch the Rockies subjected to "mountain top removal" thanks very much. They're eyeballing them even as we speak.

[rpr]

The first small (70 MW IIRC) experimental plant with carbon capture was just opened a few weeks ago in Germany. They said after about 3 years of operation we will know if the technology is feasible and what the total cost for a large plant will be.
One thing that is rarely mentioned: A coal plant emits way more radioactivity than a nuclear power plant due to the naturally occurring radioactive elements in coal. That radioactivity is in the same dust particles that cause asthma, i.e. that are inhaled.
And the cases of asthma (especially in children) are clearly located downwind of large coal plants. Don't forget what is happening in China at the moment. They are creating an ecological disaster with all the coal plants they're building.

[KillTheMessenger]

"They said after about 3 years of operation we will know if the technology is feasible and what the total cost for a large plant will be."

Well, if that's what they said, it must be true. Personally I would kind of doubt these small scale experiments having any resemblance to reality on the larger scales, but then, who am I... just an engineer.

:-)

[joeneri]

Maybe, coal plants should be built underground so that the carbon emissions can be buried before reaching the surface of the planet.

Sort of like Vulcan used to do.

[itcounts]

We could be Coal free in five to seven years in this country and use the money from "Clean Coal" the wet dream of energy company's, to help fund it.

Now can we have the same conversation about nuclear power and why it has been a huge disaster in America. The number of Nuclear power plants that have never run at 100% capacity because of design flaws is staggering considering the amount of tax payer money that has gone into it.

Socialized power, God lets hope not.

[lwaxanatroi]

Thank you. This is one of those isses that will become a "bipartisan compromise" if we're not careful. The other side will, with heavy reluctance, give up its plan to drill in the Grand Canyon, and we will say yes to clean coal, and the MSM will trumpet the wonderfulness of cooperation across the aisle. Let us hope that Obama gets the memo on this after the inauguration, whatever he says now. Our energy woes are not to be solved by risking the health of our own citizens as well as that of the planet. We simply must learn to live with less--and I'm not looking forward to it either--and no candidate for any public office dares admit this out loud. All of us as Americans must face the music. There's no free lunch, there's no tax cutting without loss of services, there's no clean coal.

[JuniorNorman]

In New Hampster the cost of cleaning up "BOW STATION" continue to climb. Mercury scrubbers would cost 150 million..... Now its over 260 million! For a plant built in the 50's. PSNH new 10 years ago that they could replace Bow with 2 wood fired plants. But they didnt want to invest in new renewable generation.

[damnadamson]

As soon as he said it last night i felt it was lie ... thanks Michael.

[krocklin]

This and nuclear power are two myths progressive people often mistakenly sign onto.
Nuclear power is not only MUCH worse, it also is incredibly expensive and dependent on a very finite resource (uranium). But most of all it is just too dangerous.
Both make no sense and should not even be under consideration.