As Robin and I have learned more and more about alternative energy sources, we’ve heard the term “clean coal” come up on occasion. Obama mentioned it during the campaign, the coal industry (no surprise) has advocated for it… but what IS clean coal? From what I gather, it’s a very crafty spin of something of a myth. (Here’s a thorough article on the non-partisan factcheck.org site de-bunking the myth.)
Burning coal emits CO2 (carbon dioxide). There’s no way around that. CO2 gasses are, at least, contributing to the environmental issues we’re facing. Also, no way around that. Clean coal is an idea for making the process emit LESS CO2, or to capture the CO2 somewhere in the process rather than pumping it into the air. BUT, no one has successfully done it yet. It’s just an idea.
Since coal is abundant in our country (although extracting it is dangerous and does have its environmental costs), and since we currently have more than 600 coal-burning power plants (producing more than half of our electricity), making the coal-burning process as clean as possible is a good thing. I agree that we should investigate how to make coal-burning cleaner, but we should not pretend that it is actually clean. At least not clean compared to wind and solar.
Just my 2 cents.
Here’s a funny commercial that the Coen brothers made spoofing the idea of clean coal:
