Mountain Holler
There's (Still) No Such Thing as Clean Coal
May 11th, 2008
GreenPeace recently commissioned and released a report on Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). The basic idea behind CCS is to capture the greenhouse gas, Carbon dioxide, before it gets into the environment, compress it, and pump it underground where it will hopefully stay. The report point by point lists every reason this is a really bad idea.First, climate scientists agree that if CO2 production levels don't start falling by 2015, we are in for global catastrophe. CCS technology is so far unproven on a utility scale and by industry and government estimates won't be ready for utility scale deployment until 2030, yet there are over 150 coal fired power plants proposed in the United States right now. Not one of them will capture and store the CO2. By 2030 it will be too late.
That 2030 date is only if it works at all. Even a small leak will undermine the entire effort. And a large leak could prove fatal. In 1986, Lake Nyos in Cameroon suddenly released a large quantity of Carbon Dioxide that had been building up in the lake bottom. The gas killed 1700 people over a 25 kilometer range. It is estimated that there will need to be 6000 storage sites by 2050 in order to have any impact on climate. That's a lot of risk.
Then there's the cost. It will take between 10% and 40% of the energy produced at a coal fired power plant to sequester the carbon which means more coal burned and higher energy prices. A plant using CCS will use 90% more freshwater than a conventional plant. In the Appalachian coal producing areas, clean water is already a dwindling resource. It's also our most important one.
Finally, CCS is taking much needed funds away from clean, renewable, and proven sources of energy such as wind, solar, and geothermal. Every dollar wasted on CCS research is a dollar that should have been spent researching or implementing renewable energy that can provide jobs and electricity a lot sooner than CCS.
And really, even if they could make marshmallows come out of the smokestacks, as long as there is Mountaintop Removal coal mining going on, there is no such thing as "Clean Coal."