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Clean Coal in China: Why It’s a Non-Starter

    • "Cleaner coal—if not clean coal—might just be the only realistic answer for one of the world’s biggest climate conundrums."

      We are talking about less dirty coal. There is noting about coal that is clean. It pollutes the air, the mining of it pollutes our water, the burning of it creates greenhouse gasses. Using coal slightly more efficiently still makes it pretty dirty.

    • Less dirty coal is possible.
      However, CO2 sequestration which for some unwarranted reason gets lumped into "clean coal" (why, I don't know because CO2 is 100% "clean", it just contributes to global warming, which is not "dirty"), is not possible on a large scale. The earth simply does not have enough storage space to store the massive amounts of CO2 that humans produce. It is a fantasy that will never happen. We are better off focusing our energy into finding alternative energy, rather than chase down a pipedream that will be impossible to materialize on any meaningful scale.

    • The only alternative to clean coal is repowering the coal plants with nuclear which is looking more and more feasible for the Chinese. They just signed up for two Russian BN-800s.

    • Incidentally, on a BTU basis, China will probably become a net coal importer this year (EIA).

      The US has been a showing a similar rapid drop in net coal exports, on a BTU basis.

    • As China builds new supercritical (high efficiency) coal plants, the oldest and most inefficient of the existing fleet of coal plants is being retired. The CO2 reduction (20-30+%) is much more than any cap and trade programs have achieved.

      By effectively outlawing new coal plants in the US we have eliminated this option for CO2 reduction while others even in the EU continue to build coal.

      Prior to CO2 concerns new coal plants were labeled "Clean Coal" as they remove 99+% of emissions. Making them sound dirty because they emit the same gas that we do when we exhale is a misleading disservice. Let's get rid of those "Dirty People" .

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