The dirty secret about clean coal: It doesn't exist

“This is America. We figured out how to put a man on the moon in 10 years,” Mr. Obama intones in a clip taken from a speech during last fall’s election campaign. “You can’t tell me we can’t figure out how to burn coal that we mine right here in the United States of America and make it work.”

The ad is part of a massive national campaign by the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, made up of coal mining companies, utilities and their suppliers. Last year, the group spent $38-million (U.S.) on communications and another $10-million on Washington lobbying. This year, it’s on pace to exceed even those enormous sums.
True clean coal technology does not yet exist. Touting coal as clean is a bit like pushing potato chips as a diet food, or a couch as an exercise device.

Facing the same U.S. legislative threats, Canada’s oil producers might as well rename the oil sands Athabasca Beach to give the admittedly dirty business a green veneer.

The term “clean coal” loosely refers to various efforts to make the world’s most polluting form of energy cleaner. Some of these technologies are already in place, such as scrubbing smokestack emissions and washing coal to remove surface impurities. It’s also technically feasible to turn coal into a liquid fuel, but the process is extremely expensive and produces about twice as much carbon dioxide – the leading cause of global warming – as petroleum.

But none of these techniques do much to curb CO{-2} emissions – the acknowledged primary cause of global warming. Burning coal remains the world’s No. 1 source of man-made CO{-2}.

The only way to make coal truly clean is to capture the CO{-2} and bury it deep underground – so-called sequestration.

In spite of considerable talk, there is no commercially viable carbon sequestration in place anywhere in the world. It remains more of a hope than a reality.

Globe and Mail