Why Clean Coal Is Years Away

Coal is here to stay, but efforts to cut emissions are ambitious, expensive, and have largely stumbled

America runs on coal. It’s cheap, plentiful (at least for another 100 years or so), and comfortingly domestic. Two hundred years ago, it powered the industrial revolution. Today, it spits out nearly half of the country’s electricity.

Coal’s problems, however, are getting to be so big and serious that they are not just overshadowing the industry but threatening to render it obsolete. About 80 percent of the electricity sector’s carbon dioxide emissions come from burning coal. A price on CO2 pollution, which Congress might impose as early as this year, is expected to be so costly that the mere prospect of it is already shaking things up. Some states have banned new coal plants, and many companies are canceling their plans in other places.

The industry’s greatest hope for survival, as far as CO2 emissions go, is a work-in-progress technological arsenal known as carbon capture and storage, or CCS. With all the makings