Slashdot Mirror
Can Coal Be Green?
wap writes "A coal-industry sponsored group, Americans for Balanced Energy Choices thinks coal is green, and has been running television ads to make its point. The ad shows an eagle unable to fly because of smog, and then talks about how much cleaner coal is now and will be in the future, with a sub-title saying that this is because of EPA regulation. Coal burning is much cleaner now than it was due to new scrubbing technologies, but it still emits just as much carbon dioxide as ever. Carbon emissions can be reduced by increased efficiency through gasification, but the only way to stop coal from emitting carbon dioxide is carbon sequestration. Everyone agrees that sequestration is expensive, but not everyone agrees that it's even effective in the long term. Should we instead follow the suggestion of James Lovelock and go nuclear as has been discussed here before?"
this reminds of someone how told me: "nuclear power is bad. we need more coal plants. and to cope with the co2, lets just plant more trees."
This is an astroturfing-free zone, people. Move along, nothing to see here...
Hate me!
Instead of running around screaming about the sky falling (pun intended), how about working to educate the population? Instead of being alarmist, how about learning about what global warming is and what it is not? GlobalWarming.org is a site dedicated to educating people about what is really going on and who is pulling the strings. There is no realistic way to stabilize CO2 now or in the next hundred years or so. There is no way you can regulate it away. Best learn to deal with the facts.
"All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power." - Ashleigh Brilliant
missed it:
from the not-really dept.
figures.
Tell me how the coal lobby can beat that one? There's no way to burn coal and not make CO2.
simply using less energy? Becoming a lot more energy efficient results in no decrease in the quality of life (actually, it improves quality of life), can be done using proven technologies, and creates jobs.
In different words: the answer is that we should neither build more nuclear plants nor more coal power plants because neither is necessary.
Is this campaign going to be called SwiftCoalBurners for Truth?
We can counter global warming with a nuclear winter.
I love it... from the "not-really dept". Of course, I agree. Time to leave coal and all other fossil fuels behind, and under ground, and move on to something else: nuclear or renewable. All else should be abandoned, the sooner the better.
"Can Coal Be Green?" misses the point.
Coal can still be "Green" by some standards and yet still be a horrible source of pollution.
The question should be "Can coal be green enough that we should choose it over other 'green' technologies?'
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
Coal *is* a clean renewable resource, it's just got a 100 million year cycle :-)
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
No, but it certainly presents a bias that is different from what is currently being shoved down our throats. Current junk science tries to blame man and his activities for the global climate when in fact man puts less than 6% of "green house gases" into the atmosphere. You also don't hear anything about the sun's cycles and how those affect our global ecology. It also tries to state that the current climate is the perfect one; one that stayed in perfect balance until man came along, when in fact the current state and it's stability has been an aberration in a historical sense.
You are right, it is biased, but at least with the information presented there, among other sites, you are limited to one bias.
"All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power." - Ashleigh Brilliant
Coal is black. Hence the phrase, "black as coal".
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
Jesus loves you, I think you suck
Coal can be Black or maybe Brown, but never Green..
But seriously, there is now a massive power struggle for power - all the different interest groups are jockeying for position to be the next big "green" fuel.
My own 2c (per kw/hour) is that the very simple obvious non-polluting green alternatives - wind, tide, wave, solar, etc - have quietly evolved to a stage where they could take over as the western worlds main source of energy. Why do we need to mess around with nuclear/coal/oil? All the supporting technologies have developed sufficiently that they are either already economical, or at worse should be soon with a little more work. If you just take wind alone, the latest batch of offshore wind farms are contracted to supply power to the UK grid at 0.03 pounds/kilowatt/hour - pretty competitive, and set to come down with scale. (British Wind Energy Association page) (American Wind Energy Association page)
The latest windmills do not present loading problems for the grid, probably kill less wildlife than other things (ie tall structures in general, glass windows, cars, oil rigs etc..) & do not really mess up the landscape for 99.99% of people.
The UK alone has many times its energy needs already available in potential off-shore sites. The USA and Australia have similar huge (and worryingly largely unsurveyed) potentials - off & on shore.
And then you can look at other sources - tide, wave, solar.. For instance, Australia is building 1 km high towers that can generate power by solar power.
Ok, back to coal - can it be green? Well if you can safely bury 100% (or close to) emmissions - dont forget all the other by-products (CO, SO2, mercury, lead.. ) and you mine it in a green manner, you would have something resembling a green source of power for a short while - until all the easily minable resources were gone, then renewables become cheaper anyway..
Nuclear? Oh sure its "cheap" - until you have to decommission the sites, and get rid of the waste safely - which has to be looked after for centuries.. Billions of pounds were wasted on Nuclear power generation in the UK to no avail - the money would have been much better spent on researching renewables, which have had a pittance by comparison.
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
are X Prize-style competitions in the area of renewable energy research. i know it's not as cool as rocket ships, but energy will be a much larger world-wide issue than space flight in the next 50 years.
I remember doing the maths once and figuring out that your typical coal power plant emits more radiation per megawatt than an equvalent Gas cooled reactor. Of course the reactor has more radiation locked inside it and in its fuel, but the coal plant is venting it into the air, of course, if the reactor goes wrong then more nasty radiation gets out.
Anyway, with appropriate scrubbing coal can be greener, but I don't really see it as being an option for the future. Then again, Oil and gas are fossil fuels which have many uses outside of power generation and we should be working to preserve those, so given the shoice between a coal fired station and an Oil/Gas station it's probably a better long term idea to go for the coal. I don't think coal has so many uses in comparison, except maybe as raw materials for Superman cornering the Diamond cartels.
I have heard that you can make biodiesel, and it burns cleaner than diesel. I'm sure that rather than burning coal, we could use biodiesel instead. Of course this would mean plant conversions. Not sure what else. Coal is a limited thing and once it is gone its gone. Biodiesel well from dictionary.com http://cancerweb.ncl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/omd?query=biodi esel&action=Search+OMD
I don't see why it couldn't be used instead. Give some farmers something to grow.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
That doesn't change the fact that freon IS bad for the ozone layer.
It's just that DuPont chose to withhold that knowledge until such time that it was profitable for them.
Similarly, most REAL climatologists agree that we are fucking up our climate system. There is no secret cabal of companies who stand to profit from this knowledge. I knew this stuff when I was in first grade, published in books about the fucking Solar System (specifically comparing Venus's fate to Earth if our trends did not reverse)... what kind of monetary advantage would the researchers and publishers of that book have back in the early 80s? Seriously?
It's the 3rd world countries who are now realizing they can make us look bad and gain a leg up on us who are now exploiting the fact that we didn't sign the Kyoto treaty. They weren't shipping our schools money 20 years ago for oceanographers and climatologists to come up with these findings.
Don't be an idiot.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
You have been brainwashed from grade school to believe a certain thing. Just because it was in the eighties doesn't mean a thing. The EPA started regulating automobile emissions in the 70's for exactly the same reasons. This whole thing started well before the 80's.
Most REAL climatologists agree that we don't know what the heck is happening. There are something like 156 different theories as to what is happening in terms of global warming and our environment. Certain companies, scientists, and political groups are pushing ONE of them. What other motivation would there be besides financial?
For example, latest hard research more than suggests that CFCs have zero affect on the ozone layer. That the behavior in the ozone layer can be directly mapped and matched with a certain, specific pattern of solar winds and activities. This research was put forward by Yang Xuexiang, a professor of geological sciences at Changchun University of Technology in China. His research showed that the ozone layer was affected by certain energetic particles striking the earth's atmosphere and breaking up the ozone layer.
Just because you read it in a book in gradeschool doesn't make it true.
"All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power." - Ashleigh Brilliant
A coal-industry sponsored group, Americans for Balanced Energy Choices
Shouldn't their name be 'Americans for Coal Power'?
Never support a group that needs a mask.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Why not nuclear?
Hmmmm?
Ron Paul 2012
Coal is a very versatile resource. It can be cracked and liquified for home delevery and it's even more abundant that crude oil albeit harder to gather. But advances in robotics should, if corporations really cared about their workes, make mineing it safer and more efficent. As for the emmisions, why cant we just pump is back where we got it in the first place. Or perhaps some form of plant reactor could be created to resolidify it through natural processes and then the plants( a form of alge imagine) could be used a fertlizer. I could go on and on... It just seem sucudial to polute the air we breath fot the sake of the bottom line.
Head down the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky and ask the people who live there. Coal mining has done substantial damage to the environment, and to people's lives.
Coal mining today is not about underground mines - it is about strip mines and mountain top removal. Instead of digging holes underground you blast the top few hundred feet off of a mountain and dig straight down. Of course the blast debris - thousands of tons of it - has to go somewhere. Usually into the neighbouring valley, destroying homes and watersheds.
The Industry says that today's coal burns cleaner. Do they tell you how?
That's because the coal is washed before being trucked to users. Where do you think the solvent laden waste water goes? Into large holding ponds, dozens of which are known to be on the brink of collapsing.
One such pond broke in 2002. The Martin County slurry spill, at over 300 million gallons, was the largest disaster of its kind ever in the southeastern United States. The spill released nearly 30 times more liquid than the Exxon Valdez.
You also need to factor in the coal company's history of just abandoning mines, leaving them for local and state governments to clean up. And the ongoing damage and injuries caused by coal trucks hauling grossly overwieght loads - by ten or twenty tons - on narrow highways.
There's more to being clean than measuring smokestack emmisions.
Three Squirrels
Why nuclear? The U.S. could get more than 95% of its electricity demand from wind turbines on less than 3% of its farmland. The law of averages over the continent's grid smooths out the inherent unreliability of localized wind power, and the rest of the shaping can be taken care of with existing hydropower. There is no need for coal or nuclear.
clean energy?
Assuming that one's hands get dirty when mining coal.
[signature]
It can at least be green enough that we should choose it over what we have now.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Anyone who's listened to old radio shows will remember ads for BlueCoal. The blue stuff is a marketing gimmick and also helped lubricate it for coal chutes.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Don't trees (and [ugh] mosquitos) produce valuable oxygen as a by-product of carbon dioxide consumption?
Let grow mosquito's (and a few more trees)!!!
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
(Yes, I know I'm being trolled and I shouldn't be qualifying the parent by responding to it. But I will anyway. weeeeeee.)
.
The reason for looking for cleaner energy and reducend energy consumption isn't so we can all sit around and pretend our farts smell like roses.
The idea is to reduce pollution and all of the bad things it does. (And if you don't think pollution from burning things like coal is a problem, go look at any old sculpture or building in an area where acid rain is an issue and try to say that again.) We can reduce these emissions either by consuming less energy (thus needing to burn less fuel) or by producing the energy in "cleaner" ways
Clean in quotes because there are about eight bazillion definitions of clean. One person will argue coal is the cleanest because it doesn't kill salmon and doesn't run the risk of any serious radiological disasters. Another will argue for hydroelectric because it doesn't release large amounts of carbon dioxide and toxic chemicals into the atmosphere. The argument over whether or not nuclear power is clean and safe is a real funhouse.
But the one thing that everyone can agree on is that, from a pollution standpoint, using less energy is always cleaner. Your assertion that we shouldn't try to pollute less because we will always pollute at least a little bit is asinine.
I suppose next you'll be arguing that I shouldn't bother taking a couple aspirin and should just go for the whole bottle instead because "it is absolute retardation" to think that taking less drugs somehow makes it non-poisonous.
Mosquitos do not consume carbon dioxide. Some species and detect and home in on whiffs of it as a way of finding the juicy animal by it's breath. However, Mosquitos, like all non-plants, live by taking carbon from their food and combining it with oxygen from the air to produce carbon dioxide.
From the blurb:
The ad shows an eagle unable to fly because of smog, and then talks about how much cleaner coal is now and will be in the future, with a sub-title saying that this is because of EPA regulation
The great irony is that the coal industry fought tooth and nail to oppose these very regulations. They never would never be able to make these claims if it weren't for "those damn liberal treehuggers".
You never "did the maths". You just read someone's propaganda in which they claimed that they had "done the maths."
These regulations only apply to NEW power-plants, and plant that have been rebuilt.
The government has grandfathered in all of the old super-smog-producing monsters, and they keep giving the power companies loopholes to evade installing the new scrubbers.
This is what happened in California back in y2k... the company that owned the plants ran all of the old dirty plants at full capacity until they hit their polution quota and had to shut them down, so the small number of remaining powerplants had to support the rest of the state. It was an idiotic move by them to try and strong-arm the government and it backfired. They didn't clean up their plants, they didn't get more exemptions, they only screwed themselves and their customers. The really disgusting thing about it is while they were crying "broke", the parent corporation had a record-profit year!
Of the EXISTING powerplants, the coal plants are by far the worst polluters. Ever read about how much RADIOACTIVE material is released into the atmosphere by COAL plants? It's many thousands of times what is allowed by nuclear plants!
Please, if you think I'm wrong, post a link to something that backs up that thought.
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
What about wind / sun power generators? I'd think that's abit of a renewable power source. athgorn
If they were up-front with the truth, people wouldn't listen.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
- Coal was, is, and will be the nastiest large-scale source of energy we've got.
- The USA has no short-term alternatives to coal to supply electric power.
- Oxygen-blown IGCC systems are a way (possibly THE way) to drastically reduce the amount of nasty stuff released by coal combustion.
- The molten ash is quenched and removed as a foamy, glassy substance.
- Sulfur (as H2S) and about 30% of the carbon of the coal (as CO2) is removed by cold gas scrubbing, which allows that fraction of the carbon to be sequestered at minimal cost.
- Mercury emissions are reduced by about 50% without other measures. (AFAIK nobody has proposed activated-carbon scrubbing of the fuel gas to remove mercury; if it works under reducing conditions, it should be even more effective to scrub a small volume of fuel gas than a huge volume of combustion gas.)
- Repowering a steam plant via IGCC nearly triples the output and raises the thermal efficiency by about 20%.
- We better stabilize CO2 or we are going to seriously mess up the environment. We already have examples of difficulties; downwind of major cities the concentration hits 600 ppm, and nasty species like ragweed are "fertilized" much better than more desirable species. Now imagine the whole world being like that...
- Of course we can regulate it away. The CO2-free alternatives are there, all we have to do is make the emitter of each kg of CO2 pay enough to pay for its removal and the problem will solve itself.
- The people who make their money from coal are going to fight such measures tooth and nail, and they have the money to obstruct and delay for decades. And don't forget setting up web sites to propagandize!
That's a partial list, but it should give food for thought.Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
- Convert powerplants to IGCC.
- Cold-scrub fuel gas, removing sulfur as H2S.
- Oxidize H2S to elemental sulfur.
- Melt sulfur with hot water and pump into deep rock formations (maybe along with CO2 as hot soda water).
And it would be gone. Would that make you happy?Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
I expect that we are going to wind up powering our transportation with coal again (but via electric power rather than on-board coal-fired steam; it only takes 200 GW or so) before we can move to nuclear and renewables. We'll do this to deal with the geopolitical problems caused by the oil dictatorships.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
... the AC is right. There is not enough cropland in the USA to replace the diesel fuel the nation burns, let alone the gasoline, coal and natural gas (at least not using conventional crops; salt-water algae may be able to change that).
Sustainability and energy independence essay
When farms are being abandoned because farm products are in surplus, destroying a mountain to make another field is waste several times over.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
- Storing electrical energy at high efficiency and at a few cents per KWH at most.
- Scheduling the wind to correspond to demand.
If you don't understand the difference between supplying energy and supplying load, your conclusions will be faulty. Let me see if I have this straight. You are arguing for a massive (10x? 50x?) expansion of power transmission (figuring the multiple of capacity and length)... and you think that the people who don't want a powerline in their back yard or their home bulldozed for a right-of-way are going to just roll over for you. Yeah, right.Wind is great stuff, but we're probably going to use it to offset our dwindling natural gas supplies instead. The full potential of wind is going to require technologies well beyond current electric transmission systems.
False premise, false conclusion. Maybe 30 years from now, but not with anything that'll be a product in the next 10.Sustainability and energy independence essay
Your assertion that we shouldn't try to pollute less because we will always pollute at least a little bit is asinine.
That's not what he said at all. In fact, if you actually read both your and the parent post, you'd see that you two don't actually disagree very much.
He said that whether or not you conserve energy, you still need to look for cleaner sources of energy, because you still need energy (which reduces pollution, so apparently you are for it). By contrast, the grandparent seemed to be implying that we don't need to look for cleaner sources of energy, because we could just conserve energy instead, so you should really go yell at him too.
You weren't being trolled. Sorry.
I've come for the woman, and your head.
All coal was not created equal, and the location where the coal comes from makes a big difference when it comes to emissions. Coal mined in the eastern US tends to be much worse than that mined in the western US, for example. In Ontario, they switched to using coal from the western US some years ago to help lower the emissions.
I have nothing against continuing to develop cleaner coal power in principle, but there needs to be a balance. In Ontario, nuclear and hydroelectric provides the baseline power and coal, oil, and gas plants provide extra power at peak times. However, in some states coal burning makes over 95% of their power. The result is that 50% of the pollution over Ontario comes directly from the US, which of course makes the public here think it's all coming from our coal plants.
You might have some good points with the reast of your post, but as far as solar goes, i don't think it it is very feasonable (at least not as a world wide solution).
:)
The problem lies is the fact that the most effective dies for sensitizing solar cells are Ruthenium baised. And, unfortunately, there is only enough ruthenium in the world to cover an area the size of North Dakota with solar cells.
While this would be an impressively large array of solar cells, it does not even begin to scratch the surface of the worlds energy demands.
Another thing to think about that you did not mention is the possible use of biodeasil. It has the interesting property that the CO2 that it liberates can just go back into more plants that will be used for more biodeasil. SO its CO2 cycle is much more short than for fossil fuels.
And of course that is the real worry. We easily have enough fossil fuels for quite a long time yet, but we cannot afford to keep pumping CO2 into our atmosphere at the exponientially increasing rate that we are now.
AT least that is my thoughts on the matter
Apparently, while a "lack of chemistry knowledge" got me a troll, a lack of common sense actually made you one, coward.
The only place there is a hole in the ozone is over Antarctica, an area wholly without man made CFCs. Yet there are not holes in the ozone layer over any other continent on the planet. Why so? Well, you have to have enough science education to understand how ozone is formed, something you are obviously missing.
In a very simplified manner, it works this way: Incoming ultraviolet radiation strikes and divides an oxygen molecule (O2). The two separate oxygen atoms are very reactive and quickly combine with other oxygen molecules to form ozone (O3). Ultraviolet energy is thereby absorbed and prevented from penetrating the earth's surface. As long as there is sufficient oxygen in the stratosphere and as long as the sun puts out ultraviolet radiation at the right wavelength, ozone will be produced. Several tons of ozone are produced every second, mainly in that part of the stratosphere that is 10 to 40 kilometers above the earth's surface.
Well, guess what? Part of the year (when this hole shows up), Antarctica is shielded from the sun. There is not enough UV striking the atmosphere to form O3, so a hole forms.
There are plenty of holes in the CFC theory of "ozone destruction." CFC molecules are four to eight times heavier than air. Can you explain to me how these heavier-than-air molecules cross the equatorial counter currents to accumulate at the South Pole and do the most ozone damage there while doing no damage anywhere else?
Just because you can regurgitate something someone told you, does not mean that you know how to think, nor does it mean you truly understand chemistry.
"All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power." - Ashleigh Brilliant
I'll make this short, cause I already answered this to another troll. One, CFCs are heavy than air. How do they get to the stratosphere to cause "ozone decay?" Especially across the equatorial counter currents? Why do they only cause damage in Antarctica? Two, O3 (ozone) is formed when UV hits the upper atmosphere in the presence of enough O2. When Antarctica is tilted away from the sun, no ozone is formed, thus causing a hole.
His date does track and correlate. The only reason he has an uphill battle is because he has to fight ignorance.
"All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power." - Ashleigh Brilliant
Yes, we should. Does this group have any propositions about what to do with the sulphur extracted from burned coal fumes by the electricity plants filters?
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
I thought this might be worth posting in its entirety..
From http://www.bwea.com/ref/stop.html
What happens when the wind stops blowing?
Much of the following information is taken from an article by
DJ Milborrow in WindDirections Volume XIV, No.3 April 1995.
Wind turbines generate electricity from a fuel that is free and will never run out, but which isn't available all the time. This factor of 'non-firm' or intermittent' generation is often cited as a detriment of wind energy, with a popular question being 'what happens when the wind stops blowing'. Not a lot really, as electricity continues to be provided by other forms of generation, such as gas or nuclear. Our electricity system is mostly made up of large power stations, and the system has to be able to cope if one of these large plants goes out of action. Equally, the system is well used to dealing with fluctuations in demand, such as millions of people putting the kettle on during commercial breaks of a popular soap on TV!
The fluctuations caused by non-firm generation of electricity from wind turbines are not noticeable above the normal rises and falls in demand on the system. In fact, it is possible to have up to 10% of the country's needs met by intermittent energy sources such as wind energy without having to make any significant changes to the way the system operates.
For more detailed information on how the system operates and what happens when the wind stops blowing, read on.
Is it a problem?
The UK's power system relies on a diverse collection of different types of generation. No individual power plant is 100% reliable, but the system as a whole is very reliable.
There are numerous power stations in the UK. There are around 23 large coal fired plant (some of which also burn some gas or oil), 17 nuclear plants, 8 large oil plants and 11 new combined cycle gas turbines (CCGTs) and several others. Large in this context means over 100MW. (The percentage of generation by fuel type in 1995 was 48% coal, 23% nuclear, 17% CCGT and open cycle gas turbines, 9% interconnectors and 1% oil and the remainder hydro and the new renewables).
Whilst wind still makes up a very small proportion of our total electricity generating capacity coping with the intermittent nature of the wind poses no problem in relation to the other fluctuations in supply and demand which the system copes with. It is very small in comparison with the problems of meeting demand if one large power station is suddenly put out of action.
Even if wind energy capacity rises to 15,000 MW, i.e. enough to meet 13% of the UK's electricity demand during 1994, it would still be a smaller threat than one conventional power station being unexpectedly unavailable.
Putting it into perspective
The other threats to the system, which far outweigh the variability of wind are
* Failure of the cross channel link. The UK is connected to France by two 1000MW circuits which periodically fail. Loss of one circuit occurs more frequently than the loss of both, but neither occurrence causes any significant upset to system operations.
* Steam turbine trips - these occur for many reasons, including false alarms. The largest stets have a rating of 660 MW and, again, the system is managed so that these cause no problems.
* Transformer failures - when these occur on the national grid, significant imbalances can occur and load sometimes needs to be shed as a result.
* Thunderstorms - National Grid network circuits can trip out if struck by lightning.
* Unexpected increases in demand - e.g. dark storm clouds can cause a sudden increase in lighting demand. Most increases in demand are predictable and so pose less of a problem.
The imagined threat due to wind generation is simply not in the same league as any of these occurrences.
The output from a wind farm is smoother than the output from a single machine, and the output from a dispersed win
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
wow
you, sir, are the dumbest poster I've ever encountered on slashdot.
Where do the materials come from to build all those wind mills? What is done to the environment to get those materials?
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Steel, composites, and fiberglass aren't a strain on the environment. Steel production once was, in the days of coke-fired plants, but those days are long past.