Is Clean Coal An Environmental Solution?

What does Clean Coal really mean?

In a world of short sighted selfishness, Clean Coal technology stands out as one of the worst possible solutions to the emission of Carbon Dioxide from coal burning power stations. Carbon Capture and Storage, CCS, is at the heart of the concept. The aim is to capture and store CO2 from power station emission fumes. Several methods of achieving this are currently under development though it is worth noting that at present none are commercially viable and none are 100% effective, so CO2 still escapes to the atmosphere.

CCS does not eliminate Carbon Dioxide but rather requires it to be stored. Current suggestions for storage include injecting liquefied gas into used oil wells.

There is a huge risk to this behavior. If there is geological activity in the area of one of these storage areas, which is inevitable, there is a chance that the gas stored within could escape. This would create a huge Carbon Dioxide burp. With vast amounts of CO2 being planned for this type of storage, a breach could release enough CO2 in one hit to have a significant effect on the balance of gases in the atmosphere.

It is important to realize that CCS does not get rid of Carbon Dioxide. All it does is hide it for a while and leave it as a nasty gift for future generations to deal with. The way things are heading our children will have enough problems without having to contend with the ticking time bomb of millions of tons of pressurized gas just waiting to escape into the atmosphere.

An Operating Clean Coal Power Station

The Swedish company Vattenfal, based in eastern Germany, is operating a pilot 30 Megawatt power station that is using CCS technology. The station only produces CO2 gas, with no other contaminants in the exhaust fumes. The high purity and concentration of CO2 in those fumes means capturing it in an economically viable way is much easier. Once captured and compressed into a liquid, the CO2 is trucked to and buried in an underground storage site.

Those pure exhaust fumes come from burning the coal in pure oxygen as opposed to using regular air. Pure oxygen has to be obtained by the fractional distillation of liquefied air. This reduces the profitability of this method of energy generation through producing less and more concentrated fumes, but does nothing to remove the long term threat of addition of those gases to the atmosphere.

I'm Alright Jack

It is important to realize that CCS does not stop Carbon emissions. It merely delays them to become a future problem. It is just this kind of "I'm alright Jack" attitude that has led to the environmental problems we have right now. If we are to genuinely clean up the future, we need to produce clean energy, not just dirty energy with a whitewash over the top of it.

Clean Coal would be better called "swept under the carpet" coal. - 39468