What is Digg?114 Comments
- acmethunder, on 01/10/2008, -5/+23Sadly it's true. Short term gain is what big coal is all about, and this is further proof that regulators are truly not innovative, just engaged in a massive PR campaign.
- rizzo2008, on 01/10/2008, -1/+16still don't want Nuclear eh? France is 80%+ nuclear energy and they have no problems (plus they reprocess and recycle the used nuclear fuel so dangerous storage is reduced by a huge amount - our old nuclear plants in the US don't reprocess).
- burchie2, on 01/10/2008, -2/+15Yeah, coal is dirty, but saying that it emits 67 percent more co2 than natural gas doesn't get the point across, because natural gas is as clean burning as fuel comes.
- trancemin, on 01/10/2008, -2/+13This guy is a complete moron. IGCC is much cleaner than conventional coal combustion and the capital payback is still in the 5 year range. Supercritical boilers in conventional coal plants are also about twice as efficient as historic coal facilities
Wind relies on a production tax credit to be viable and it only works in certain areas. The US is the Saudi Arabia of coal not using it is foolish. Nuclear is the definite answer but these environmental lobbyists need to get their heads out of their asses. - axiomflash, on 01/10/2008, -0/+11It is important to note that mining coal is a environmentally devastating process, all concerns for emissions aside. And it will get ten times worse after we have burned all the easily accessed coal up. It will take a magnitude of energy, waste, and pollution to create "clean coal". Even if coal plants spat rose petals into the air, COAL IS A MESS.
- Praesil, on 01/10/2008, -2/+12He missed the point of the power plant. Yes, it is expensive, but it isn't JUST a coal power plant. They plan to use it as a test bed for new coal technologies.
Building ANY coal plant with carbon capture is really expensive right now - that's the problem. Without some type of demonstrations, it won't go anywhere and won't get any cheaper. What happens when China keeps building coal plants and finds that carbon capture is really expensive, especially for all the plants they just built in the last 10 years? It won't matter how many wind turbines we build. If we can bring down the cost of carbon capture and storage through demonstrations and new technologies, we can export the technologies and make a global impact. - abran1984, on 01/10/2008, -0/+8A lot of sensationalism, not enough facts. Buried
- JasonCox, on 01/10/2008, -3/+11Clean Coal is cleaner than the standard coal being burned today. Yeah it's not as clean as Natural Gas, duh, but if we can just halve the emissions of our coal plants until such time that we develop sustainable fusion, think of how much less crap we'll be dumping into the atmosphere.
- axiomflash, on 01/10/2008, -3/+11solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, hydro. All of these have infinity less emissions than natural gas. All fossil fuels are polluting.
- jsg7, on 01/10/2008, -2/+10If someone is rational, they will realize that we are going to continue to use coal for the foreseeable future. And so will other countries. So I see no excuse not to try to develop technology to use it more efficiently and in a less polluting way.
That's not to say we should buy into the hype of "clean coal", but we can work to improve it. - bilbus, on 01/10/2008, -0/+8That is not 100% accurate.
France used fast breeder nuclear power plants, the US uses Pressurized Water Reactor.
The byproduct of Pressurized Water Reactors is only waste.
The byproduct of Breeder Reactors is plutonium. That's why IRAN wants to build Breeder Reactors.
The US does this to discourage the spreed of plutonium - flashingcurser, on 01/10/2008, -1/+9The writer doesn't even try to prove that the Illinois coal plan will not work. If he had any evidence that it will not work I could be behind him. If it does work, it sounds like a fantastic idea for removing the co2. Did I miss something?
- TechMike, on 01/10/2008, -0/+8The writer must not understand the difference between hand-building one experimental facility and the shared cost of producing mature technology. How much is each concept car, compared to what you buy off the showroom floor?
The point of this kind of research is first to trap the CO2 and contain it in storage locations until we can find a way to unbind the oxygen efficiently and leave pure carbon behind. The most promising technology for coal is gassification for liquification into SynGas and then polygeneration, which could turn it into “Fischer-Tropes” diesel. (FT is a process from the 1920s that Germany used in WWII, but isn't economically viable until oil costs more than $100 a barrel).
The concern for the world environment is China, who is not worried about air pollution (some areas there have near-pernmanent smog). There’s one coal power plant being built in China about every 5 days, a gigawatt a week of new construction. - MisterMills, on 01/10/2008, -0/+8Sure natural gas burns cleaner than coal, it also costs substantially more and is a much more finite resource than coal.
- slimnickyy, on 01/10/2008, -1/+8Sadly nuclear is a better option than 'clean coal'.
- OC73, on 01/10/2008, -2/+8If we have it, let's use it. Sure better than buying oil from terrorists.
While we're at it, how about a few more refineries and nuclear plants. - snichael, on 01/10/2008, -1/+7The "only one plant"-argument is a complete red herring. By that "logic," we should only ever support technology that goes from non-existence to full-scale wide operation with no intermediate steps! Also: this particular technology - carbon sequestration - is a litmus test of whether someone is just an ideologue who'd rather spend their time ranting than actually accomplishing something: if you say you're for reducing airborne carbon dioxide from coal plants...and then totally dismiss a technology that can eliminate over 90% of it (from the air)...you've got some serious cognitive dissonance going on inside your head! What we need are practical, real-world solutions -- NOT more pie-in-the-sky dreamers who fantasize about shutting down modern industrial civilization and going back to "simpler times."
- br0ck, on 01/10/2008, -0/+5Alan Alda interviewed some guys at MIT for Nova that are using Algae to absorb the 80% of the pollutants and almost all of the CO2 from coal smokestacks, and then using the heat of the stack to dry the algae to a powder that can be used as an energy source (ethanol or burning). Pretty cool stuff. Search for 'algae' on a transcript of the full Scientific American Frontiers episode: http://www.pbs.org/saf/1506/resources/transcript.h ...
- wiggles, on 01/10/2008, -1/+5You are the one misinformed on this. The new Clean Coal plant aims to sequester all emissions of CO2, heavy metals, SO2, etc. in an underground sandstone deposit instead of belching it into the atmosphere. You're referring to the tendency of some coal deposits to contain high amounts of sulphur, which is not what this process is about.
Here's a great article on the new plant they're building for this in Mattoon, IL: http://www.chicagotribune.com/services/newspaper/p ... - billsil, on 01/10/2008, -1/+5when there isnt enough oil to support the US at a reasonable price due to increased demand or decreased supply the politicians wont care (nor should they) if some process causes environmental destruction or not. the US has the largest supply of coal in the world and we'd be foolish not to use it if we really needed to.
- slvrbullet87, on 01/10/2008, -0/+4yeah kinda like reliable wind
- kimondo, on 01/10/2008, -1/+5In the UK EON power are proposing building a new 'clean coal' power station in Kingsnorth - this is likely to become a massive flashpoint for protests from the environmental organisations as it would make a mockery of UK government aims to reduce CO2 output.
http://www.stopkingsnorth.org - spamly, on 01/10/2008, -1/+5Why is such a dirty girl shown as the image on a clean coal article?
- MadScientist68, on 01/10/2008, -0/+3Exactly how is mining coal messing up the environment? If you know, then please post. This part isnt covered very well in the media.
- eviltandem, on 01/11/2008, -0/+3"Sigh. I don't even know how to respond to that. "
Obviously not with any meaningful input. Let's put your brilliant scientific mind to work! You are obviously a chemical wizard, far surpasing my poor 7 year old mind. So explain to me where the C in the final co2 comes from?
omfg! Would that be the fuel? (aka: coal) - Morphine7399, on 01/10/2008, -0/+3What you fail to understand is that it's not as simple as switching over to a new 'clean coal'. As stated in the article, new plants need to be created in order for this coal to be cleaned and burned with lower emissions. It's not economically smart for us to invest all of this money into a project is going to take several years to get off the ground and isn't even a final answer to our emissions solution.
- mtekk, on 01/10/2008, -0/+3"France used fast breeder nuclear power plants, the US uses Pressurized Water Reactor."
You forgot the Boiling Water Reactor, we have lots of those too, but the byproducts are essentially the same. - OneLess, on 01/10/2008, -0/+3Hydro gives off emissions. When the reservoir above a dam is flooded, all the vegetation that is now underwater rots and gives off methane.
- Ned613, on 01/10/2008, -1/+4The picture which accompanies this article points to other environmental damage in addition to carbon and methane emissions. That is mountain top removal mining which is tearing up Appalachia. How ironic that environmentalists lobbied for the Clean Air Act Extension of 1970 to protect the environment from acid rains and to get at low sulfur coal we tear up the landscape.
The solution to the world's energy problems nuclear energy. It is clean and environmentally safe. - br0ck, on 01/10/2008, -0/+3Yes, CO2 is all natural and safe to breathe, but this CO2 has been stuck below the surface of the Earth for millions of years. Burning fossil fuels releases trillions of tons of ancient CO2 into a balanced system and the CO2 will likely stay in the atmosphere for 100s of years.
- eviltandem, on 01/10/2008, -0/+3The only idiots I see in the whole debate are the environmentalists. Why don't I have nuclear power? Environmentalists.
Currently all the clean energy sources are a pipe dream. None of them produce the energy in the quantities our culture requires. Let's stop talking about how evil we are and instead focus on actually working on these problems. If the other technologies aren't there yet, let's work on cleaning up the one that is.
Calling it evil and labeling yourself an idiot (after all, you use coal power if you live in the US) produces 0 results. - br0ck, on 01/10/2008, -1/+4And the energy to create and maintain these structures can come from other clean energy sources. Construction vehicles could be powered by carbon neutral sources like switch grass.
- brufleth, on 01/10/2008, -0/+3You are accurate but you missed the new applications of the phrases. "Clean Coal" is being applied to new coal plant technologies. The idea is to reduce the crap that gets spewed into the air when you burn coal. It doesn't just include scrubbers. GE has a gasification process where they try to turn the coal into a gas and burn that to reduce the overall need for scrubbers. See: http://www.ge.com/research/grc_2_1_3.html
This article is silly because they're focussed on C02 emissions. There isn't much that doesn't give off C02. If everything could use something else for power that'd be nice but the US has a lot of coal reserves and 24% of world power comes from coal and that probably isn't going to change over night. - inactive, on 01/10/2008, -3/+6Here's the difference between clean coal and regular coal:
Clean coal production hides the pollution in the ocean or in the ground. There's no such thing as clean coal. - br0ck, on 01/10/2008, -0/+3Yes, plants and plankton turn CO2 into O2, but it will them an extremely long time to sequester all of the CO2 that's been added to the balance. Now, increasing the amount of CO2 will likely increase the growth of plants and algae which will start to balance things out, but this will also take a very long time. Also, there are negative side effects to increasing algae growth in the form of harmful algae blooms.
- forgottend, on 01/10/2008, -0/+3People don't seem to understand how a power grid works. You can't just replace you entire power sources with wind mills, you would have a completely unreliable and expensive power grid. Wind power may be cheaper then Clean coal but they have two different jobs.
Coal and Natural gas power is used primarily to deal with inconstant usage of the power grid, we don't use power at a constant rate and therefore we have match the input to the grid to the output. If they don't match it can damage the grid, and the power stations. Think about it, if I am producing a million extra watts of power where do you think it is going? Coal and Natural gas are easy to keep the system under control, as there output can change in a matter of minutes rather then hours.
Wind power on the other hand is difficult, if it is to fast or to slow you can't use a turbine. if a gust hits a wind farm it causes a spike in output. wind is also slower at night. Denmark has a nightmare controlling the output of it's wind farms.
Nuclear is used only as a baseline for power, since the output from a nuclear plant is consistent and difficult to change to match demand. you can only build so many nuclear plants to satisfy the demand.
Anyhow Clean coal is one of the better solutions out there, yeah it runs on coal... but it has an complex and expensive process to make it run as cleanly as Natural Gas. and look, not oil! - boonesfarm, on 01/10/2008, -0/+3cleanER coal. We should be able to get behind that. I you want coal to go away within a 20 year window, that's just not realistic.... unless you can convince everyone to accept higher utility bills and bring enough alternative energy facilities online in the next two decades to make it happen. On a related topic, with the dollar devalued, wait til you see how much coal we're going to export to Europe this year.
- rizzo2008, on 01/10/2008, -0/+3So why don't we build breeder reactors and reuse / reprocess the plutonium?
- eviltandem, on 01/10/2008, -0/+3Yes. Environmentalists are insane and have no actual ability to enact any of the rhetoric they routinely use. If this is so easy a decision why doesn't Greenpeace open their own power plants and make a killing in profits? Because nobody can.
If you read the article from that point of view, it's just funny. Especially when you consider that coal is probably the source of power for the site and poster. - brufleth, on 01/10/2008, -0/+3Well put. A press release worth reading: http://www.ge.com/research/grc_2_1_3.html
The US really does have a lot of coal and 24% of the worlds power comes from burning coal right now. It is stupid not to look for cleaner ways to use it until better cost effective options are available. - slimnickyy, on 01/10/2008, -0/+3Which will eventually find its way out. All you need is a minor quake or shift in the crust, which happens all the time.
- eviltandem, on 01/10/2008, -0/+3...and none of them can currently come close to producing the same amount of energy as we get from coal. I'm not saying they aren't great and probably the future. But it's not like we're burning fossil fuels because we all want the planet to be polluted. We actually use that energy believe it or not.
- joeanon, on 01/10/2008, -1/+4It's not about short term gain morons, it's about COST PER KILOWATT and coal is the cheapest for GREAT reasons.
One is it's in greatly surplus, secondly is it has very high energy density.
Natural gas is IMPOSSIBLE to transport since it does not compress like propane.
That means natural gas is much like hydrogen in that it takes tanks several times larger to store the same amount. That means with gas prices higher transporting natural gas has become less and less profitable.
Natural gas is piped to houses for a reason and not brought in by tankers. As a portable fuel, propane is cheaper and superior. Most people are simply ignorant of these facts, hence this common argument that natural gas is better than coal.
Yea, and everywhere than actually has natural gas, uses it, but since like 80% of the nation DOESN'T have natural gas and there just isn't even remotely enough natural gas to replace coal...
well... this article is a lie. Coal has AWESOME energy density. Natural gas, like hydrogen has horrible energy density, which is why it's stored in massive underground reserves and piped to the source.
How can you write an article on energy and not grasp these basic concepts ?
Coal is awesome, much like gas, it has wonder energy density for it's costs. Coal puts out carbon and fly ash which contains mercury, but to think you can't limit the output of the pollutants is yet another lie.
Even with pollution controls coal will be the cheapest per kilowatt and there simply isn't enough natural gas to replace goal..There is TONS of natural gas, but since it's energy density is so many times less than goal it takes 10 times as much natural gas to equal coal supply.
Much like hydrogen, natural gas is in limited supply and is VERY hard to deliver to the consumer. You either have to pipe it to every house or deliver it in tanks several times the size of propane tanks and without compression. Once you pay for deliver natural gas's extra transport costs it won't cost less than propane or oil.
The biggest advantage of natural gas is that it burn clean and natural gas appliance pretty much never wear our or need cleaning.. or it takes 20 years for the burner to actually get dirty enough to stop working.. much unlike oil which clogs up the burners many times faster.
This is a perfect reason why many hot water heaters use propane or natural gas. It's a burner that runs year round, all the time, and as being such would require cleaning if it weren't natural gas or propane.
It will be a MUCH smarter move to wait 10-20 years for the solar/renewable energy revolution, than to take on the costs of making coal clean or replacing it with some inferior fuel like ethanol.
Many people think ethanol is renewable, but it's not. It takes fertilizer and then distillation to make ethanol. Fertilizer is a MAJOR pollutant and affects fish and drinking water along with the local ecosystem. Fertilizer is the fuel for plants, and .. it's not really renewable. Plus all the work and gas powered farming equipment to harvest it.
It's a scam and it's guaranteed to up the price of food. Wait for solar and wind to take over. Even retrofitting coal plants is likely a waste of money. Solar has the potential to make electric even cheaper with very low pollutant potential. Just wait for it and you'll save trillion o dollars.
What climate damage is done will almost certainly not be slowed or undone with retrofitting coal plants. That is a very minor drop in the bucket.
We need solar or even nuclear as a last resort combined with battery powered cars.
That's it.. THAT IS THE SOLUTION... hands down... you WILL NOT find a better option. Electricity is ideal, is highly versatile, the highest efficiency delivered by any fuel, it can be generated by many different sources, it's very safe and the mechanics to to make an electric engine are much more reliable than an internal combustion engine. - sevenoutdb, on 01/10/2008, -0/+3researchers are perfecting a way to make baking soda out of coal emissions. It's produces loads of baking soda, and cheaper than mining the stuff. Keep reading... clean coal MUST become a reality.
- eviltandem, on 01/10/2008, -0/+3You're right. We should just turn off America.
- inactive, on 01/10/2008, -0/+3Story is pointless buried as inaccurate.
- nicepants, on 01/10/2008, -0/+2Which means plants & trees LOVE it! Maybe we don't need less CO2...we just need more trees.
- HomerS1, on 01/10/2008, -0/+2The simple fact is that economics rule the power generation industry from both the supply and demand side. State and Federal regulators mandate that the utility companies generate the cheapest possible energy for the customers (you).
The cheapest form of power is hydro, but we can't build any more dams (all the good spots are already taken). Next is nuclear, but we can't build any more of those because of FUD. Then comes coal. After that gas, wind, solar, etc.
Whine all you want about evil utility companies and dirty coal, but until people are willing to pay 2 to 10 times as much (and the regulators will allow same) for the same amount energy from clean/renewable sources, we will continue to burn coal until we run out of it. - inactive, on 01/10/2008, -1/+3Well, NO.
It doesn't say that at all.
It says they will TEST new methods to try to reduce pollution.
"The cutting-edge plant is designed to test whether technology can coax abundant coal into making electricity with little pollution, burying greenhouse gases deep in the earth."
Notice it doesn't say it will be built with all "clean" technology, nor does it say it will produce less pollution.
So you are falling for the ***** implications that this plant will be somehow "CLEAN".
How dumb do you have to be to accept what the coal company tells you at face value?
Man, I bet when the coal industry thought of this they didn't expect so many suckers to fall for it. - MrUnderbridge, on 01/10/2008, -0/+2Clean coal is precisely what it claims to be: cleaner than regular coal. 'Clean' refers to a marked reduction in particulates, SOx, NOx, mercury, chlorine, etc. The goal is to reduce air pollution, smog, and things like that. It does not and has not ever claimed to produce less CO2, so that's a bit of a strawman attack.
The author's point is also somewhat moot. Is coal a dirty energy source? Of course it is. It's the dirtiest one we use, and we use a lot of it. So the question is not whether coal is cleaner than other energy sources, because it's not. That question is irrelevant because wind and solar, as they exist right now, can't replace coal in the US or China. We can't build nuclear plants fast enough either, and nuclear got shelved for a long time because the environmentalists in the 70s fought the wrong fight.
As a result, the only relevant question is whether clean coal is better than old-school, pollution-belching disasters of coal-fired power plants, and the answer is yes. -
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