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The original fossil fuel is back in the spotlight, under fire for being the biggest contributor to climate change (when burned in power plants). In an attempt to polish coal's tarnished image, the industry has launched a series of ads and other PR efforts (to the tune of “Jingle Bells”):

Frosty the coal man is a jolly happy soul
He's abundant here in America and he helps our economy roll
Frosty the coal man's getting cleaner every day
He's affordable and adorable and helps workers keep their pay

Beyond caroling coal available online (isn't a lump of coal at Christmas traditionally a bad thing?), a slew of clean coal advertisements have hit the airwaves, touting the benefits of technology that can capture and store the climate-changing greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO₂) produced when coal is burned to generate electricity.

Unfortunately, as another ad campaign points out, such technology does not exist (except for a 30 megawatt power plant in Germany.) Critics charge the energy industry has blackened its reputation by promoting a technology it has done little to support:

A new analysis by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C., found that since the inception of clean coal programs aimed at capturing CO₂ earlier this decade, $3.5 billion has been spent by private companies to develop the technology via 18 projects—just a fraction (1/17) of their profits in 2007 alone, according to researcher Daniel Weiss. During that same period, these companies spent $45 million on ads for clean coal and $125 million in lobbying dollars to defeat a national renewable energy standard and federal legislation to place mandatory limits on CO₂ emissions.

"Peabody Coal, Southern Company, Duke Energy, AEP and Massey Energy have created a chicken and egg global warming policy," Weiss says. "Don't require reductions until carbon capture and storage is commercialized but then they don't invest in carbon capture and storage to make it a reality."

The Bush administration, for its part, canceled its own clean coal effort FutureGen earlier this year, because it got too expensive.

It remains to be seen whether President-elect Barack Obama will resuscitate FutureGen, an advanced coal-fired power plant that was set to be located in his home state of Illinois. Several members of his new administration, including potential Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and science adviser John Holdren, have argued for its rapid development. An industry consortium known as the FutureGen Alliance has already paid $7 million to purchase a 400-acre site in Mattoon, Ill., on which to potentially construct the facility.

The International Energy Agency (an energy policy organization for the world’s 28 richest countries) estimates that the world needs to spend $20 billion in the next few years developing and deploying such clean coal technology. Australia, China and even Norway are leading the charge and it may be that such technology allows the utilization of the world's remaining coal reserves. And there's little doubt that it's needed, according to a report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: developing countries like China and India will burn their coal reserves to power industry and alleviate poverty so developing cleaner ways to use it will be a global imperative.

Ultimately, however, it would be tough to make coal truly clean, not least because of mountaintop removal mining choking valleys and waterways. And yesterday, the collapse of a coal ash pond in Tennessee buried 12 houses and 400 acres—a reminder of the 129 million tons of radioactive and/or toxic waste left over after coal burning produced in the U.S. each year. Even if carbon capture from coal is developed, a risk remains of the stored CO₂ seeping back out of the ground.

Further hindering clean coal efforts may be the attitudes of some folks in the energy business, like Don Blankenship, president and CEO of Massey Energy:

The coal companies and utilities are not alone in advertising: corporations from Shell to Sharp are advertising their clean energy efforts. But clean coal technology has a long way to go, no matter how you look at it.

13 Comments

1. 1. JamesDavis 03:49 PM 12/23/08

   Didn't the tobacco companies try the same tactics. Because of the tobacco company's deceptions, we are a lot wiser to the coal company's deceptive advertisements. Why isn't the EPA romping on these companies? Isn't there still a law about truth in advertising? It seems the EPA is just as worthless as the coal companies.

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2. 2. Chuck Darwin 05:44 PM 12/23/08

   Even if they manage to implement "clean coal" tech (don't hold your breath) burning coal produces massive quantities of toxics-laden fly ash. Just today the TVA suffered a fly-ash spill of biblical proportions. See it here: http://www.knoxnews.com/videos/detail/aerial-footage-tva-storage-pond-breach-harriman/ Bottom line: We need to move off coal even more than we need to move off oil.

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3. 3. scientific earthling 11:18 PM 12/23/08

   Here we go again!
   Coal is sequestered carbon. Nature took a long time and energy to create coal. It is natures way of storing excessive CO2 from our atmosphere. Man can undo the process for energy but will pay the ultimate price for his greed. Extinction.
   
   Wonder why the coal lobby spends more money on advertising and lobbying than on research?
   
   They know the energy obtained from sequestered carbon is less than the energy needed to sequester it. Cannot be done.
   
   Perhaps they are thinking on a different time scale to us ordinary mortals. In a few million years after our extinction CO2 levels will drop and carbon will be sequestered again.

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4. 4. Forlornehope 05:33 AM 12/24/08

   There has been quite a lot of work done over the years on underground gasification. This uses the producer gas / water gas process and leaves most of the carbon underground. Like all these things it has its limitations but it would seem to have more promise than digging the stuff up and then having to get rid of both the carbon dioxide and the solid residue.

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5. 5. eoleen 10:18 PM 12/25/08

   I don't give a hoot how you do it: burning coal, oil or "natural gas" SAFELY is just so much hot air. The energy required to "clean up" the mess is close to, if not more than, the energy gotten by burning the fossil fuel. And that STILL leaves the little, embarrassing, problem of what to do with the CO2... Any method of putting it underground in the form of CO2 is a non-starter. It will most definitely will not remain a liquid: just check the phase diagram for CO2. Any little earthquake, or even random drilling, will rupture the repository and release the gas... Remember that little lake in a volcanic crater in Africa, I think it was, that "turned over" and killed every living thing: birds, insects, animals, including livestock as well as the people? Can you imagine this happening after we have stuffed a century's worth of CO3 underground/

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6. 6. whiteOwl 10:55 PM 12/25/08

   I think CO2 is good. It is 385 parts per million in the atmosphere. Its what the trees and plants need to grow... its what I exhale... Plant more trees and vegetables... and feed the 2 billion starving people in the world... more trees and plants = less CO2 and less starving people.

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7. 7. eoleen 11:37 PM 12/25/08

   Dear whiteOwl: That is just what the coal companies are saying... I wonder why...
   
   The truth is that we have reached the point where the oceans are becoming acidic: this is bad for diatoms and other teeny-tiny living things which are at the bottom of the food chain in the oceans. Also bad for coral reefs, etc. If the plankton go EVERYTHING that lives in the ocean goes.
   
   Yes, you exhale CO2, and plants (trees are plants, by the way...) use it to build sugars which they then convert into starches and cellulose. HOWEVER!!! It is a waste product, and no species can long live in its own excrement. Part of the problem, by the way, is those 2 billion "starving people". At our current consumption of resources modeling indicates that the Earth has a much as twenty times the population of humans as it can support on a sustainable basis: the key word being sustainable.
   
   At the current rate I don't give H. sapiens much more than 75 years plus-or-minus 25.
   
   And by the way: feeding those starving people simply cycles the excess of CO2 through them: it doesn't sequester it one little bit.

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8. 8. Dr. Peng Win 12:23 PM 12/30/08

   The problem is, people want their cake and eat it, too...Obviously, the folks commenting here used a computer to post their comments. These computers are powered by electricity which has to be generated somehow. Every electronic device you use is powered by electricity which has to be produced chemically or mechanically. Where do you people think the electricity that powers the lights in your homes comes from? Someone will have an argument against every type of electricity production, yet they will go home after work and turn on their lights and their t.v. Coal-burning: bad, polluting, produces CO2. Nuclear power: radioactive wastes. Wind power: unsightly, expensive props. Water power: environmentally damaging dams. Solar power: too expensive and inefficient, unsightly solar panels. Fusion: too far away. You get the idea. You want electricity for all your goodies, but you don't want it produced by any method. What are we to do?

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9. 9. eoleen in reply to Dr. Peng Win 01:32 PM 12/30/08

   Dear Dr. Peng Win:
   
   Yes, we want our electricity (I'm an electrical engineer, by the way) and there are difficulties with any way we produce it. It's just that some ways are much MUCH dirtier than others. The cleanest, for the loads we have to power, and it's not just residential use - that is minor, is nuclear. Yes, there are radwastes, but "spent" fuel rods still have 90% or more of the original fuel left in them - recycling is the way to go. And of the "true" wastes, well, roughly half of the nuclei are stable - not radioactive. This leaves a very small amount of material that has to be "permanently" disposed of: stuffing the junk into a subduction zone is certain to remove it from the surface of the earth for several millenia.
   
   Are we ever going to stop using oil or coal or natural gas (methane, mostly)? No, I don't think so: i can't see running an extension cord several miles out into the wilderness to run a chain saw or a camp lantern. Just not in the cards. And airplanes aren't going to have extension cords either. But we don't have to burn gas to go 15 miles to the rail station and back either. Somewhere I read the statistic that 78% of the driving that Americans do is less than 40 miles per day. Obviously I'm not talking about 44ft semis here: but shopping trips and soccer practice and commuters trips account for a lot of our mileage.
   
   And better insulation would reduce fuel demands too.

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10. 10. Dr. Peng Win in reply to eoleen 04:37 PM 12/30/08

    Good points, Eoleen. Yes, there is still a large supply of fissile material available for nuclear reactors and, if spent fuel rods are recycled and/or disposed of properly, it is a relatively clean energy source. As for powering our vehicles and chain saws, yes, I don't forsee a day anytime soon when hydrocarbon fuels will be rendered obsolete. Humans do need, however, to eventually develop a clean, universal and sustainable energy source and become more responsible stewards of our amazing and only home, Earth.

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11. 11. eoleen in reply to Dr. Peng Win 05:17 PM 12/30/08

    Isn't that what I just said? Yes, I suppose we'll run out of fissile material one day, but by that time we should have one or more sky-hooks working, or a elevator to orbit, or a Lofstrom loop or something, and be able to build really HUGH solar cell arrays and microwave the power back to where it's needed.
    
    Of course, the human population should be greatly reduced by then - energy supply is only one of the little inconvenient problems we have...
    
    But, seriously, I really doubt we'll get the chance. With the opposition to doing anything substantive about the problem(s) facing us, chiefly but not exclusively global warming, I don't see us avoiding a total catastrophe by approximately 2050. All our models, which keep on getting better and better, are running behind the "progress" of environmental deterioration. The ice is going faster, the seas are getting acidic faster, etc. Given that we are just beginning to talk about these things, and that the TVA can more or less get away with declaring that the 5.4 million cubic yards of semi-solid fly-ash that leaked "isn't toxic", I don't see any sign of the sort of anger that will cause the shut-down of the major pollution sources and their replacement with clean NUCLEAR power, with the concomitant roll-out of plug-in hybrid or pure electric vehicles to handle the 78% of the load. I really don't Not only has GM "promised" the Volt (40 miles on a charge) for several years now - always pushing it back by a year - now it's up to 2011 from 2010, when you can get a refit in California (granted not cheap, but they are very low volume production) that will to the job. And there is also the Tesla roadster: 0-60 in under 4 seconds, 285 mile range, pure electric, and on the road now!!!!
    
    And there was a small electric run-about from Norway that Ford bought out and disappeared.
    
    And remember the EV1?
    
    If there were any interest AT ALL by the press they should be shoving these little inconvenient items into the faces of the Detroit Three.

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12. 12. eco-steve 10:39 AM 2/9/09

    Energy Efficiency is what we are all talking about. Take the case of electricity.The efficiency of an average power station (of whatever type) is about 33%. Transmission losses are about 11%. A lamp's efficiency is about 5%. These eficiencies multiply, so the light obtained from the energy source is about 1.4% if there is no lamp-shade, the rest is wasted as heat! The average solar cell has an efficiency of 11% and research models get 47%.
    So the future is locally produced direct current solar energy. Big electric grid companies have no future... Again, small is beautiful!

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13. 13. jorgito in reply to scientific earthling 11:35 AM 4/20/09

    $170 million for Ads and lobbying vs. $3.5 BILLION for development??? Did you flunk math???

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