Both McCain’s and Obama’s presidential campaigns are touting “clean” coal as an alternative energy source. However, although there are cleaner ways to burn coal, clean coal as a reality does not exist. Clean coal is an oxymoron and a lie, and there are several factors why coal isn’t clean: (1) extracting coal is energy intensive and environmentally destructive; (2) mountaintop removal is a cheap and easy method of coal extraction used by the industry to replace mining, and the consequences of mountaintop removal are the destruction of Appalachia and its culture, environmental degradation of mountain valleys and waterways, and a loss of jobs in the mining industry; (3) clean coal technology relying on sequestering carbon doesn’t exist on a large scale and hasn’t been tested on a large scale; so (4) no one knows if sequestered carbon stored underground will keep, or (5) how it might affect the environment. From the washingtonpost.com:

Clean coal: Never was there an oxymoron more insidious, or more dangerous to our public health. Invoked as often by the Democratic presidential candidates as by the Republicans and by liberals and conservatives alike, this slogan has blindsided any meaningful progress toward a sustainable energy policy.

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Orwellian language has led to Orwellian politics. With the imaginary vocabulary of “clean coal,” too many Democrats and Republicans, as well as a surprising number of environmentalists, have forgotten the dirty realities of extracting coal from the earth. Pummeled by warnings that global warming is triggering the apocalypse, Americans have fallen for the ruse of futuristic science that is clean coal. And in the meantime, swaths of the country are being destroyed before our eyes.

Steven Mufson discusses the meaning and consequences of “clean coal”:

To be sure, there are cleaner ways to burn coal, all things being relative. New coal plants operate more efficiently than old ones and therefore burn about a third less coal. And companies have been trying to come up with ways to isolate carbon dioxide from exhaust gases and bury it in the ground.

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To some politicians, the phrase “clean coal” may seem like shorthand for technology that would separate carbon dioxide out of the exhaust of a coal-fired plant and bury it in the ground. So far, however, no coal plant like that exists in the United States, though a handful of companies are interested in building one. Such plants are expensive and untested. The Energy Department recently announced that it would hand out billions to a few firms to try out technology to capture and bury carbon dioxide in the ground. The financial rescue bill passed by the Senate Wednesday night included tax credits to firms that do that. But it will be many, many years before any carbon sequestration plant is in operation.

I’ve also heard many utilities, coal companies and politicians use the phrase “clean coal” to describe certain coal plants that convert coal to energy with an efficiency rate of over 40 percent, compared to older plants that function just over 30 percent. These plants, called “supercritical” plants, operate at higher pressures and higher temperatures and burn coal more efficiently, thus requiring less coal to generate the same amount of electricity. But either kind of plant still produces emissions.

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