We are hearing a lot in the media about the use of “clean coal”; even the president is pushing this concept…but people…that is all that it is…a concept…..and above all it is a lie…there is NO such thing as “clean coal”.

The project’s goal is to test and develop affordable technology, on a commercial scale, that can remove 90 percent of emissions produced by coal plants. Chu said he thinks that the plant — which would be built with a group of private coal and utility companies known as the FutureGen Alliance — will move forward with some changes that have not yet been determined and will become a part of larger “portfolio” of research plants developed with other countries.

The FutureGen plant is expected to create jobs, and backers are currently pushing it as a stimulus project that could employ as many as 11,000 workers. The alliance must compete for the stimulus funds, but Chu’s support adds significant momentum to the effort.

There are a few testing ways to clean coal emissions, but that does not make coal a clean source of energy.  One technique is called carbon sequestration and storage (CSS).
CCS technologies attempt to capture carbon dioxide (CO₂)from the waste stream of coal power stations and transport and bury it in underground reservoirs.

The problem with CCS, in a nutshell, is that it is too little, too late, too expensive, too risky, and it displaces other solutions that can do the job.

CCS has very few of the attributes needed to provide a solution and moves us in the wrong direction. CCS is still in the testing phase and will take a decade or two before it can be implemented in actual working power plants, and then still further decades before it could be scaled up to operate on large numbers of coal plants around the globe. That is too late to change the course of our energy system away from carbon, and too late to prevent emissions crossing a tipping point.

Demonstration CCS projects all plan to operate close to underground storage sites. One of the problems of scaling up CCS is that most coal power plants are not near appropriate storage sites and so very expensive infrastructure would need to be built to transport the captured carbon dioxide. This means that costs of CCS will increase as it is scaled up and the transport infrastructure costs mount.

CCS is too expensive. It will substantially increase the cost of building coal plants (perhaps a near doubling of plant cost, according to the US Department of Energy) and therefore increase the cost of electricity also. The energy required to remove CO2 from the coal plant stream is also substantial and would consume up to 40% of the energy used by the plant.

Thus, coal plants fitted with CCS would require more fossil fuel inputs, and the prices of these inputs can only increase as time goes on and carbon is more fully costed.

The costs and risks of CCS will be passed on to the public, whereas renewables and efficiency aren’t exposed to these costs and risks. The costs of research and testing of CCS are being borne in substantial part by the taxpayer, not by the already heavily subsidised coal industry. Australia subsidises coal over renewables research by a huge margin and the gap is increasing. The risks of long-term storage of CO₂ are so great that no company will take on the liability and many are seeking to limit their legal liability to a mere 10 years.
CCS provides a means for the coal industry to continue reaping the profits while passing on the risks and costs to the public.

CCS delays action to reduce emissions at a time when we can no longer afford to wait, and it displaces those solutions that can work now and have a lasting impact. WWF’s notion of so-called “clean coal” is an oxymoronic vision of Australia’s energy future that will derail real efforts to confront climate change if we let it.

Enough said?