A great little video landed in my inbox this morning, you can check it out below...
Dirty, dirty coal has been so invasive over the last century, and it looks like it is here for the long haul.
The recent birth of the term 'clean coal' has undoubtedly extended its shelf life, as people will feel reassured that progress has been made to mitigate the negative effects of burning this fuel.
But 'Clean Coal' is just a marketing term, not an actual product! What does the term actually refer to and what does it deliver?
As noted on Wikipedia:
It implies that it is possible to make coal a fuel source that is free of (or very low in) carbon dioxide emissions and other pollutant emissions. Some of the techniques that would be used to accomplish this include chemically washing minerals and impurities from the coal, gasification (see also IGCC), treating the flue gases with steam to remove sulfur dioxide, carbon capture and storage technologies to capture the carbon dioxide from the flue gas and dewatering lower rank coals (brown coals) to improve the calorific value, and thus the efficiency of the conversion into electricity.
And clean coal is something that even the president is keen to invest in. In August, National Geographic reported that the Obama administration had introduced a $1 billion project to demonstrate a new combustion technique where carbon dioxide could be stored underground. (You can read the full article here.)
The idea driving 'Clean coal' centers around capturing CO2 emsisions and storing them underground. Last year President Obama was quoted stating:
"Clean coal technology is something that can make America energy independent."
But environmentalists strongly argue that there is no such thing as clean coal and that the suggested technology simply doesn't exist. The issue lies in the availability of coal and its cost - cheap and plentiful, coal provides the United States with an efficient power source with relatively low economic costs.
The environmental and health costs of coal fired plants, however, is high and cannot be ignored. The video above may poke fun at the notion of 'clean coal technology' but the worrying question is; if Coal puts on a 'green' hat, will we buy it??
Check out other great stories on Celsias:
"New Wave" of Coal-Fired Power Plants in US Not a National Trend
Coal is a good source of energy but it creates the lot of pollution by releasing carbon dioxide
Written in June 2011