‘Clean’ coal to make its debut in Illinois
June 16, 2009 by Tom GuayPosted in: In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views, News, Technology
The technology that might help retain coal as a source of affordable electricity (all the jobs associated with mining, marketing and burning it) might be developed after all.
The magic solution to create a “clean” coal plant is to capture the plant’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and store them underground, hopefully permanently.
Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu says the feds are considering restarting the FutureGen project that was abandoned during the Bush administration as being too expensive ($1.8 billion). Chu says DOE has corrected some math mistakes by his predecessors and now the FutureGen seems affordable — only $1.3 billion.
The carbon capture technology would be tested at a coal-fired power plant in Mattoon, IL.
Chu says FutureGen “holds great promise as a flagship facility to demonstrate carbon capture and storage at a commercial scale.”
As TV ads all last winter noted, there is no “clean” technology that eliminates coal’s CO2 emissions. What will make coal “clean” in this FutureGen experiment is to prove that CO2 can be stored underground.
The big promise is that if CO2 can be successfully stored underground, then the U.S. can move ahead with plans to reduce its GHG emissions without dramatically driving up electricity costs.
The DOE announcement is here.
Tags: clean coal, FutureGen, GHG emissions, Steven Chu
GreenandMore.com
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June 18th, 2009 at 10:49 am
How do we transform those underground storage tanks to farms? get plants to absorb CO2 underground – think of how we could extend the growing season!
June 18th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Coal was not, is not now nor will it ever be clean. It is black and it is dirty. It is dirty to mine with shaft & tunnel mining, black lung disease, strip mining, acid streams, mountain top removal ‘mining.’ It is dirty to move because all coal transportation is done with with fossil fuels! it is dirty and inefficient to burn because it produces huge amounts of waste heat, fossil CO2, carbon monoxide and nitrous oxide, mercury, cadmium and spews these pollutants into the air we breath. And, last but not dirtiest of all, besides all of this active pollution, when coal has been used, there is the millions of tons of ash left after burning. This ash is itself is a certified hazardous waste. The only thing “clean” about “clean” coal is the non-coal half of the Madison Avenue deceitful Orwellian name.