Clean Coal A Necessity:Clean Coal , K-Fuel Is Very Important To Our Energy Future:
Refined coal can serve as bridge technology until clean coal is ready
By KEVIN R. COLLINS
Tennessee Voices
The Tennessean's recent editorial about the need to advance clean-coal technology accurately recognized the realities this nation and Tennessee face if we are to have a comprehensive national energy policy.
The federal government's recent abandonment of an advanced clean-coal power project comes at a time when U.S. demand for electricity will increase 17.7 percent in the next decade, while supply is expected to grow only 8.4 percent. Reserve generating capacity, normally 10 to 15 percent, could be down to 1 or zero percent in some places.
This is not an encouraging scenario. While a variety of energy options exist, each possesses its own challenge. Nuclear power has waste issues, coal is associated with greenhouse gases and other emissions, wind (especially in the South) and sun are inconsistent, hydropower is tapped out, natural gas costs and supplies are volatile, and conservation, no matter how hard we try, won't close the gap.
Converting coal to gas, burning the gas, capturing and burying the carbon dioxide it creates is the Holy Grail of clean coal, but some experts say it will take 15 years to develop commercially viable greenhouse gas capture-and-storage systems, and market penetration might not happen until 2045. Recent setbacks for proposed plants of this type exemplify the stark economic realities of pursuing leapfrog science to solve today's energy problems.
Our country needs new thinking to construct a workable, achievable national strategy that balances energy supply and demand, environmental protection and economic stability.
Any comprehensive solution will require an integrated national approach that includes conservation, alternative and renewable energies and better use of traditional energy sources through "bridging technologies" that make coal cleaner in the near term while work continues on technologies that are decades away.
As The Tennessean observed, coal supplies more than 50 percent of U.S. electricity. Coal will be a major source for meeting U.S. and world electricity demand for decades to come. Alternative energy proponents reject coal as a long-term energy resource, but reality dictates otherwise. To dismiss this reality is dangerous to our energy security and economy.
Understanding this reality, we must make coal as clean as possible as soon as possible — and we can. Progress is being made with near-term solutions such as "refined coal" and a variety of other "pre-combustion technologies" that improve coal's quality before it is burned.
In the case of our own company, Evergreen Energy, the refined coal process applies heat and pressure to remove water and mercury from lower-quality coal. Through better efficiency, the coal emits less CO2, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides per kilowatt-hour generated. Refined coal can bridge us to the day when future generation coal technology is available and affordable.
With the energy technology companies already at work on near-term solutions, American ingenuity can deliver practical energy and environmental answers for this nation and the world.
https://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080314/OPINION03/803140433/1008/OPINION01