Friday, January 30, 2009

Clean(er) Coal

I'll try to be a realist here for a minute. Clean coal technology, it's not clean, but it is cleaner. Basically its the same way we've been making power from coal for a hundred fifty years, what they are doing now is capturing the CO2 cooling it to -19 degrees so its a liquid shipping it to an old natural gas site and pumping the CO2 into the ground. First thing I would say is that if you're going to build a "clean coal" power plant, why not build it on the site of an old natural gas well? How much energy are we using chillin' that shit and shipping it? Anyway the article is pretty honest, we already have a shit load of coal power plants, of we can retrofit these collectors on them and sequester the CO2 then it buys us some time to come up with long term solutions. Basically were fucked and we need to do what we can. This is not a solution, not at all, but it might just be a viable band aid until we can create sustainable power. Pretty much the same as ethanol in that regard.

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