Clean Coal: Is it really Green?

A coal specialist for the Sierra Club, Alice McKeown, cites that when most people think about pollution from coal, they often only think about the pollution at the smokestacks. However, she concludes in a study released last month by the Sierra Club titled “The Dirty Truth about Coal”, that the pollution starts at the coal mines and goes all the way until the electricity is burned and used in homes and businesses.

According to “The Dirty Truth About Coal:” half the nation’s electricity comes from coal which uses 260 million gallons of water each day, produces 120 million tons of solid waste per year, and is the cause of 80 percent of the carbon dioxide pollution from electricity production in the United States.

There are new technologies out called Carbon Capture and Sequestration, which is a method used to capture carbon dioxide at large sources such as power plants before it reaches the atmosphere. However, without proper storage, it is completely useless to capture carbon dioxide. Alice McKeown’s study is trying to remind people that coal is still dirty no matter what you do to it. It will still pollute and current methods of carbon capture and storage are still in the early stages and more expensive than conventional coal fired plants.

The Sierra Club has been actively trying to block new coal plants from being built in the U.S. and have succeeded in some cases, and in others at least delayed them. Many nations around the world have a large coal supply and it is an easy and viable means of producing energy. However, with global warming…coming up with alternative solutions and renewable energies will have to be put on the table before new coal fired power plants should be allowed to be built.



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