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Coal — The Other Alt Fuel
This Wired piece is really a round-up about Coal: The Other Alt Fuel. One of the main stories is about an initiative to convert low-grade coal to other uses — like diesel fuel and so forth, but of course that nasty issue of carbon production comes up again.
To name a few of the really, really serious biproducts of Coal usage. Hg precipitates out from exhaust at an alarming rate (*those states with coal-fired power plants all have massive Hg and CH2-Hg contamination: see, http://www.dnr.mo.gov/pubs/pub2100.pdf/ and, http://www.moenviron.org/airqualitymercury.asp/ for one central US state's Hg warnings). Sulphur fom coal burning is the primary source of H2SO4 in acid rain that has decimated the lakes in the Northeast US and etched limestone (Cleopatra's Needle http://members.aol.com/Sokamoto31/ny.htm/ has been in NYC since 1881 and the two sides facing the prevailing wind have been etched free of inscription (perfect on all four sides when it was put it into place) due to acid rain) building materials. Nitrates (NOx) are the secondary sources of acid (HNO3 Nitric Acid being the most common) and a product of incomplete combustion of coal. About 75% of the coal-fired power plants scrub NOx out of the exhaust - but there appear to be no small-scale scrubbers consistent with vehicle use.
Releasing more Carbon from the carbon sink is just one more addition to the ever-increasing load of greenhouse gasses on the planet.
Iron - in its various forms will "poison" any catalytic converter small enough to fit on a vehicle.
The cost of scrubbing or converting Coal into a cleaner-burning fuel is problematic and the energy used to scrub may well exceed the energy realized from the converted coal.