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Time to bury the ‘clean coal’ myth
By Martin English | December 17, 2008
From The Guardian’s Greenwash series:
Is clean coal possible in future? Well, if you mean could we capture carbon dioxide emissions and bury them somewhere out of harm’s way – in old coal seams or oilfields or salt mines – yes, it is possible. The former British chief scientist Sir David King called it “the only hope for mankind”.
As the article goes on to state, the problem is that this phrase “clean coal” now has a life of its own thanks to the remorseless propaganda behind it. This year (2008) a coalition of US coal mining companies and electricity utilities called Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (and recently renamed the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity) is paying the advertising agency R&R Partners $US35m to promote “clean coal” through advertising and other promotional activity.
The campaign’s effect on the US Presidential election was chilling. Both John McCain and Barack Obama supported clean coal. After all, it allows them to oppose dirty coal without antagonising anyone. And the Americans for Balanced Energy Choices sponsored two early presidential debates, during which not one question was asked about global warming.
However, the most authoritative study, The Future of Coal, published last year (2007) by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), concluded that the first commercial carbon capture and storage (CCS) plant wouldn’t come on stream until 2030 at the earliest. In the same year, the Edison Electric Institute, which represents most US power generators, admitted to a House Select Committee in Washington DC that commercial deployment will require 25 years research costing at least $US20bn.
The mythology of clean coal has penetrated deep into political thinking around the world because it is so convenient. In Australia, the Labor Government of Kevin Rudd is keen on “clean coal” because they imagine it allows them to promise both to meet Australia’s Kyoto protocol pledges and to assuage the concerns of industry.
The bottom line is that generating significant amounts of low or no carbon energy from any source will take significant amounts of R&D and / or huge infrastructure changes. In turn, large amounts of time and money. Unfortunately, this is just as true of renewable energy as it is of clean coal technology.
This means you can make pretty compelling arguments against just about every technology anyone has proposed, but the fact remains that if we aren’t willing to return to pre 20th century conditions, we will use some energy generation technology whatever its climate change impact.
However, the biggest problem with Coal (and Oil) is that we can’t meet current emissions targets with a technology 20 years over the horizon. Which makes it impossible to meet the future emissions targets our politicians are happily signing up for (because they won’t be around to enforce them).
Topics: Australia, History, Personal, Politics, Technology | 4 Comments »
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January 5th, 2009 at 5:42 am
This article is quite interesting the coal and other information is presently expalined electric utilites and other information is explained in manner full way.
January 5th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
Its quite impressive article the future is coal is divesting world wide for more new resources.As we know previously clean coal name was not under consideration.Now the technology is grooming.
January 20th, 2009 at 11:25 pm
There are some threats like global warming and climate change to our planet are so crucial..The global warming can be reduced by using clean coal technology by capture and store the wastages in to ground.
January 22nd, 2009 at 1:42 am
As the is been discused about the mythology of clean coal which has been penetrated deep into political thinking around the world because it is so convenient .coal is our currently ourbiggest source of energy, we must consider ways to clean it.