Introduction:
Burning coal produces almost 14 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year which is released to the atmosphere, most of this being from power generation. Coal is one of the oldest and dirtiest energy source used today. When coal is burned it releases things such as sulfur dioxide, coal ash, and carbon dioxide. The most harmful out of all of these is carbon dioxide. The release of massive amounts of carbon dioxide causes problems because it is a heat trapping gas that is largely responsible for global warming. The idea of clean coal is to reshape the use of coal and its products. There are many products used to do things like this such as wet scrubbers, coal washing, and digitization but the main one used is called carbon capture storage (CCS). Even with these new technologies of “cleaning coal” there is still major possibilities of harm it causes to the environment and to humans. So, is clean coal really clean?
Historical Background:
Clean coal started in the 1980’s when the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) began conducting a joint program with the industry and State agencies to demonstrate clean coal technologies large enough for commercial use. The program, called the Clean Coal Technology & Clean Coal Power Initiative (CCPI), has claimed to have a number of successes that have reduced emissions and waste from coal-based electricity generation. The National Energy Technology Laboratory has administered three rounds of CCPI funding and projects to reduce emissions and waste were done with it.
Claims and Evidence:
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| Kemper County Power Plant |
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| Boundary Dam Power Station |
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| Vattenfall’s Schwarze Pumpe Power Station |
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| Oxy-Fuel Carbon-Capture System |
Current Situations:
If you look back at the evidence section you see that there are three different types of clean coal plants stated and explained. Now in 2018 none of these are still running because they claim it is not cost efficient or the outcome was not true. The Kemper County energy project decided to stop the power plant and try to make a cheaper natural gas power plant. This is because when it was open they spent $7.5 billion dollars to run the clean coal plant. This was 3 times their initial budget. In 2015 Boundary Dam power station revealed that there were serious design issues in the carbon capture system leading the unit to only be available 40% of the time. Because of this they had to sell 800,000 tonnes of CO2to another energy company and pay a $12 million-dollar penalty. The Schwarze Pumpe power station stopped running in 2014. They stopped running carbon capture because they found that it is too expensive and the energy require makes the technology unviable. These are three examples of many of how the process of clean coal seems to never workout whether it is because of the cost or the lack or reducing emittions/pollutants.
Reference List:
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