Ignore the spin: Coal gasification is a stupid idea

For anyone lured by the prospect of “clean coal” – the process of pumping huge amounts of energy into a solid fuel simply to change it into a gas or liquid before burning it – take note.

The US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) just released a comprehensive study on coal gasification that came to the following conclusions:

Without geologic storage of the CO2 produced in the conversion process, the greenhouse gas emissions from coal-based fuel would be about twice that of oil.

With geologic storage, CO2 emissions would be nearly equivalent to those from oil.

So if I have this right, we spend billions in stimulus money developing Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) to simply blow it on a dirty fuel that, after you capture all the C02 you can, is still no cleaner than burning petroleum?

New Scientist