Stimulus Debate Could Clarify How Much Obama Supports 'Clean Coal'
More generally, the industry is emphasizing scale in its pitches to Congress: It wants Washington to make a larger, broader commitment to developing carbon capture and storage technology. The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity recently put out a list of 80 carbon capture and storage projects—some commercial scale, some research oriented—that it says are underway in the United States, and stressed hope for additional investment. Obama appears to be considering it. "What I heard before and after the election is that Obama would like to build five clean-coal demonstration projects," says Gonet. "That would be great."
Business and labor leaders, noting that about half the country's electricity comes from coal and that the industry employs large numbers of workers, are also pushing for coal perks in the stimulus. "We need to invest large sums of money in exploring carbon capture and sequestration," says Mark Ayers, president of the AFL-CIO's Building and Construction Trades Department. "Some people say coal has to go away. But coal cannot go away."
- Read about what the nuclear industry wants from the stimulus.
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Reader Comments
'Clean Coal' Debate
It amazes me that the myth of clean coal is not adequately discussed in the television news media, however, it does give me hope to see people commenting on just that, even if it is online. We all know that the internet has the ability to affect massive amounts of change, and I hope the issue of clean coal is one of them. If you haven’t yet discovered it, there’s a coalition of many groups dedicated to fighting the misinformation about clean coal. www.powerpastcoal.com has launched a ‘100 Days of Action to Power Past Coal’ campaign, and it’s goal is to provide, through it’s website, the ability for community activists to add their local events and gather information about clean coal. Please check it out, and let’s make this a powerful campaign. In order to do that, we need all the assistance we can get.
Pros and Cons
I've been trying to tune out this whole topic for the past two years because of a personal stigma I have on the whole environmental community and the obnoxious "going green" trend. I've realized that I can still think that some of those people are obnoxious, but open my eyes to the economic and foreign relations aspect of this topic.
From what I've read, natural gas is the cleanest and easiest resource we can substitute with petroleum. I've also only read from public opinion, not actual publications, that there isn't such a thing as clean coal. I'm still expecting some more attention will be paid to natural gas.
However, being from the tri-state area of Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia, I would welcome a clean coal initiative due to the economic growth it could bring to this region, as well as the rest of Appalachia.
Strategicaly, Coal is Different from Oil
From the point of view of energy independence, Coal is considerably different in 2009 from Oil.
The United States has huge reserves of coal. It need not be imported. There is no OPEC for coal -- all producers with significant US market share are subject to US antitrust laws.
As to utility -- Coal provides the majority of US electricity, Nuclear is far behind. Coal provides more than Oil and natural gas. Coal and Nuclear are the bulk of "base-load" US capacity.
Wind and Solar are nice to talk about -- but have the "storage" problem -- electricty is not easy or cheap to store in bulk. Peak solar production is only 6 hours a day during summer. What do you do at night or when the wind dies down?
Lead-acid batteries work, but require huge amounts of lead. Pumped-storage has its evironnmental hazards - like one in Missouri where the upper dam broke....trashing both the lower dam and much downriver....
Oil and natural gas are more expensive than coal, but have a role in the quick-turn-on "peaking" gas-turbine power plants required to take care of no-wind conditions.
We simply can not ignore coal....
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