Stimulus Debate Could Clarify How Much Obama Supports 'Clean Coal'

'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....

Clean Coal???

I doubt very much that the term "Clean Coal" is factual and should be classified as a last choice option. There is a pleathura of untapped energy sources from wind, solar, hydrogen, methane, geothermal, tidal, or even extraterrestrial by building satellites to laser beam the sun's energy to Earth... Using coal is unfortunately reverting back to the easy way which is what tied us to fossil fuels in the first place. Using a different type of dinosaur for fuel does not accomplish anything nly chages the name!!!