Clean Coal? Myth or Reality.

"Clean coal" I put apostrophes over it to emphasize the irony of its meaning. Simply because there's nothing clean about the production of coal, let alone the cleaning process if you even want to call it that. Brad Plumer in his article "What 'Clean Coal' Is - and Isn't" states "In 2014, the Clean Air Task Force estimated that particle pollution from power plants, mainly coal, led to 7,500 premature deaths each year". If the innocent and directly correlated deaths caused by the coal industry isn't enough, I'll go into further detail on why there's nothing clean about "clean coal". Why do we focus so much time and resources going after this wild goose chase "clean coal"altogether.

I mean this with no political sway whatsoever, simply judging based on the information that was provided for me. Not only was the quote snipped from Trump's speech completely incomprehensible, the information in which I could gather was far from the truth regarding "clean coal" or at least misrepresented. Let's start by defining "clean coal", at least in the sense in which Trump was referring to in his speech. What he's referring to is the practice of quite literally physically cleaning the coal in a matter of which the coal is rid of it's ash, which would otherwise be burnt off producing far more carbon emission than your "typical" coal. Which on paper sounds great, if the cleaning process of the coal didn't affect the body's of water surrounding the plants in which this coal is "purified". Simply put it's like saving your bath water from yesterday in order to conserve water, only to stay just as dirty if not more now completely nullifying your beginning efforts.

One could argue that the production of coal can be far more efficient and produce less carbon emissions with the proper funding and development of plans such as "carbon capture and storage", if the proper resources could be applied. In fact there's a plant already in place practicing just that! "There is one such highly efficient coal plant currently in operation in Arkansas, but given their high upfront costs, it is unlikely that more will be built soon in the United States." Bingo, Plumer phrases it perfectly. It simply is too expensive to make these plants efficient in a matter that reduces carbon emissions effectively.

I'm ending this discussion following the previous paragraph strategically for the sole reason that if there is no such thing as "clean coal", why are we focusing so much time and resources going after this "wild goose chase" altogether. It's already common knowledge how damaging the coal industry is to not only the health of the earth, but the humans and animals that reside in it as well."Trump administration announced that it was canceling a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine study into the health impacts from mountaintop removal mining, in which companies in Appalachia blast open the tops of mountains and dump the rubble into nearby valleys." Mountain removal mining causes pollution and destruction in every step of its process, from burning of forests to the use of explosions to expose the coal, to the "cleaning process" of the coal and down to the carbon emissions caused by burning it to produce energy. This information is very important to understand the negative effect of MTR which leads me to assume that these resources are being meticulously censored for the benefit of the coal industry. "Even a coal power plant that emits fewer pollutants is still a far dirtier way to produce electricity than a natural gas, nuclear, wind or solar plant." Plumer helps me iterate how pointless the efforts of keeping the coal industry alive altogether is pretty much useless and if not a more strenuous process than the benefits of the "clean coal".

Works Cited

Plumer, B. (2017, August 23). What “clean coal” is - and isn’t. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/23/climate/what-clean-coal-is-and-isnt.html