CLEANER COAL

CLEANERCOAL

CLEANER COAL

NBC/ 11/18/ 2008

5:30 CST.

BRIAN WILLIAMS AND ANN COLE

At the moment clean coal is an oxymoron. Coal is so abundant and so necessary, but it is not clean. However, way down the road is the hope for sequestration where the particulates and the coal come out of the chimney and head into the ground. It is expensive, but one can not over look its potential. Coal is abundant. Jobs related to coal can not be outsourced. Half of the USA’s energy comes from coal. There are roughly 108 electoral votes that come from coal. So, it was a pleasant surprise when NBC reported that both East and West Germany have a new plant next to some traditional plants that burn…clean coal.

Brian Williams introduced the story, but the lead researcher and reporter Anne Thompson went to a German plant that is already in operation. Produced by Vattenfall Energy, a private/public company, they have the plant in place and it is operational! The cost to the consumer is 50% greater than regular coal. That means that if you spend 1 dollar before, you now spend 1 dollar and 50 cents now. However, the trade off is worth the investment for a couple of reasons. It takes a huge energy source that won’t run out and put us back to the hunting and gathering societies and it does so at less the cost then most cap and trade programs. Even China can afford something like this as they put up a coal plant that is new up about 3 or 4 a week. Incidentally, as the construction process with technological improvements continue, the 50% cost could be reduced.

Coal is burned with oxygen and #8212 bio chemicals. The energy that is so precious and needed to provide for electricity and electric cars of the future, the heat and waste head for two major cylinders. These two cylinders can then be moved some 200 miles away into a bomb resistant cavity. There it is stored in the ground and won’t leach into underground water reservoirs.

Further, there is ash that can be used in some forms of construction. What all this suggests is that as plants are created, this strategy or another could make a good energy system. This does not mean that our country should spend all of its money on this. Numerous wind mills and solar are in the works as well as nuclear and improved insulation in housing.

There have been a couple of books that envision a country that suddenly finds that fossil fuels has gone beyond Hobart’s peak and it is very expensive and countries continue to fight over it. In the mean time, your neighborhood is filled with houses that have started to grow food in both the front and back yards. Just down the street in one house you can barter for food and other items. That takes the place of the old corner street market. Regardless, coal is with us. Coal is dirty but abundant. We need energy and this new technology might bring the coal people with some environmentalists. It is also possible to dig coal and then return the land in an attractive way to bring back the green.

Not to be utopian, but even when gas is a couple of dollars or five or six dollars, we are running out of fossil fuel. Further, there will or should be more people and regular energy sources appear to be on a course toward scarcity.