What is Clean Coal?

Many people have been praising the benefits of clean coal. The coal companies have been running advertising claiming that coal is “America’s Energy” and that they are working on clean coal that will be both efficient and will reduce carbon emissions. There are quite a few problems with clean coal, though, that simply make it ineffective, inefficient, and a waste of time and money.

First, the term “clean coal” is a misnomer. There really is no such thing as clean coal – no “clean” way to burn coal on any large scale currently exists. It still ends up polluting the environment. Even if all of the CO2 emissions of coal burning were gone (a feat that is, and probably will be forever, impossible), that leaves the solid waste that coal factories produced. Just a few months ago, a coal plant’s containment facility broke and released a slurry of toxic coal sludge on over 300 acres of land (a spill greater than that of the Exxon Valdez). This coal sludge could spill into groundwater supplies and contaminate the drinking water of thousands of people, something that also happened a few years back.

These events are generally few and far out, though – why abandon clean coal just for that? Because clean coal extraction also destroys countless ecosystems in processes that literally destroy entire mountains and valleys. Destruction of the habitats of hundreds of species occurs during mountaintop removal mining, a common way to get coal. Switching to clean coal wouldn’t stop this process and would continue to scar the earth.

Now, even the few small “clean coal” plants that use carbon sequestration (putting the CO2 into the ground, basically) are enormously expensive. Almost any alternative energy beats the cost of clean coal, produces none of the pollution, and is renewable. Large clean coal plants don’t even exist yet – the U.S. government and various other organizations have all cut back on their funding for clean coal plants. How can we expect to build hundreds of such plants when we can’t even get one up and running?

Finally, the economy is already at a bad stage. Clean coal would cost over a trillion dollars if we were to add carbon sequestration technologies even to only half of U.S. coal plants, and because 10% of the total output of each of these plants would be devoted to keeping the carbon sequestration equipment running, there would be a 10% energy shortfall leading in massive rolling blackouts across the nation unless we spend even more money. This loss of electric power means the loss of modern civilization and thus the collapse of our economic infrastructure. All clean coal spending will ever do is increase the deficit of the country and divert attention from actual effective ways of powering the nation, like wind or algae biofuel. Sadly, with a lot of money being poured into advertising the promises of “clean coal” by the coal companies themselves, clean coal might keep on being funded.