Can Coal be Clean? - Part 1

While renewables should still far and away be our top priority, one area that strikes me as (a) important and (b) filled with opportunity is cleaning up coal. A report from the UK's Parliamentary Office of Science & Technology states that as of Dec 2005, 1,000 gigawatts of global electricity come from coal, representing ~39% of worldwide energy. Coal provides 27% of the world's overall energy (i.e. electricity plus transportation), according to BP...

...and 23% of the energy in the U.S. now, rising to 26% by 2030, according to the Dept. of Energy.


So coal is already a huge portion of our energy supply, and China and India's booming economies will want new coal plants to help fuel their growth.

Meanwhile, coal's high carbon content makes it the biggest CO2 emitter per unit of electricity produced. So when you turn on your light switch, you're pumping CO2 into the air just as you are when you turn on your engine. It kind of makes you want to clean up coal, doesn't it??

Some organizations such as Greenpeace have dismissed clean coal as infeasible, throwing their support behind renewables instead. I disagree with their position mainly because they're not viewing the whole picture. Yes, renewables are always better even than "clean coal," but no, coal is not going away tomorrow. It has a huge installed base, and since coal is relatively cheap to produce, the temptation will be there (especially for emerging economies) to bring new coal plants online. We need to try to improve the clean-coal technologies.

My next post on coal will focus on the different technologies and their stages of development. Finally I'll look into economic opportunity, particularly from carbon trading.

To be continued...