Re: theWatt Podcast 71

Hello Ben,

It was an interesting interview. Here my comment:
1. To call it "clean coal" is a marketing re-branding of a quite dirty energy source. You have several negative impacts of coal and its gasification.
a. Getting the coal from the ground. Mining destroys vast areas of land and makes water in the area polluted with heavy metals. In China you also have huge problems with coal fires in the ground in coal mines that emits huge amounts of CO2 and dangerous gases. (The fires start due to the mining activities.)
b. The vitrified and sulfur solids need to be handled in a safe way. It can not just be dumped in nature since they contains lot of dangerous chemicals.
c. CO2 emissions: Burning coal, and to a lesser degree "clean or gasified coal" will emit CO2. Something that emits lots of co2 can not be branded as "green" in my opinion. You need to be able to pump CO2 into the ground to be able to call it green in this aspect. Since there is virtually no CO2 that is being pumped into the ground today from any coal driven plant I think that this so called "green coal" needs to prove its virtues as described above before we call it "green goal".
Bottom line: “It is easy to brand something green; it is more difficult to really be green.”

I thought it was unfortunate that you did not discuss the CO2 issues more in detail with Mr. Ben Anthony and what can be done with it and how it compares with normal coal plants.
That being said, I think it was a very good interview!

Cheers
Daniel