I hate the label “clean coal”. The simple alliteration and the pairing of opposites (coal = dirty, clean = clean) makes the term irresistible, especially for headline writers. Talk about a PR manager’s dream.
Even the cigarette makers didn’t have the chutzpah to label their low-tar products “healthy”. Granted they didn’t have such catchy wording available.
It’s a shame that research and development resources, particularly taxpayer money, are going toward new ways of burning coal. Even if we could get to zero emissions through some kind of gasification process, coal mining will remain an environmental nightmare. (Like virtually all Americans, I’m guilty of passively allowing someone else’s mountaintop backyard to be blown to smithereens so I can keep my lights on.)
I know the mantra: we have to keep all options on the table for dealing with global warming and energy security. But I worry about skewed priorities, especially given the significant political clout of the coal interests. I’m not against developing lower-emission coal plants, but I have deep reservations. I’d hate to see a single coal plant — however much better than existing plants — built if a renewable energy power plant could be built instead.
There’s also the issue of the world’s huge existing fleets of coal-fired power plants. MIT has published a report summarizing a March symposium on retrofitting coal power plants to reduce CO2 emissions. The report argues that we need to tackle the problem if we are going to make much headway on global warming.
Developing carbon capture technologies for existing coal plants is akin to bandaging a gaping wound. No reasonable person would leave a wound untended, but also no reasonable person would call the bandaged wound “good as new” and mean it literally.
We should stanch the flow of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. But our focus must remain on getting off of fossil fuels entirely as quickly as possible.