Post-combustion capture facility at AEP Mountaineer plant in West Virginia.
There is no answer to climate change until we directly address the problem of coal industry carbon emissions. Potential solutions to that problem are sometimes called “clean coal.” But the term has drastically different meanings to different audiences. To some environmentalists, coal cannot be made “clean.” To many industry experts, clean coal processing is a straightforward practice that has been widely—and successfully—used for decades.
These views of clean coal are simplifications of a complex challenge. The truth is somewhere in the middle. Coal as used today is a uniquely dirty fuel and its environmental impacts are devastating, but the technology to make coal vastly cleaner is proven and largely available.
CATF aims to put that technology to work on a massive scale, quickly. The short-term goal is to lower coal-related air pollution to rival the emissions from natural gas. However, if the worst impacts of climate change are to be avoided, CO2 emissions of all fossil fuels—including coal, natural gas, and oil—must approach zero levels by mid-century. In order to achieve this, we must direct public policy toward the following objectives:
- Radically lower power plant emissions of the air pollutants—nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, and particulate matter—closely linked to premature death and disease.
- Require the capture and storage of more than 90% of the CO2 emissions that drive climate change.
- Vastly reduce the amount of heavy metals released by coal either directly to the air or indirectly from disposal of solid wastes such as sludge and ash.
- Minimize coal plant water use.
- Reform coal mining practices worldwide to minimize impacts on land and water, including a ban on mountain top removal of coal
