Clean Coal is like Safe Sex

Clean Coal is like Safe Sex: There’s no such thing.

There is such a thing as SAFER sex. And there’s such a thing as CLEANER coal.

Safer sex, which I’ll define as always and properly using a condom, results in a 98% rate of pregnancy prevention, and a roughly 70% to 85% rate of disease prevention, depending on what study of what disease one is going by. There's a lot of factors, and a lot of diseases...

Cleaner coal, which I’ll define as “use of chemical processes, steam reformation and scrubbers to reduce the amount of sulfur dioxide, mercury and particulate emissions from the smokestack”, results in “a decrease in the amount of criteria air pollutants, or emissions that result in locally unhealthy air quality”. Let’s say cleaner coal technology is 100% effective at this. In this hypothetical situation then cleaner coal has exactly 0% effect on reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

If “clean coal” was “safe sex” then we’d be disease-free and pregnant. Or pregnancy-free and disease-ridden. It all depends on how you view the metaphor. That’s if clean coal was fully implemented around the nation and the world, which it’s not and it’s not.

If we were able to implement carbon dioxide sequestration - preventing carbon dioxide emissions - then it would drive the cost of energy generated from coal way up, to the point where energy generated by wind would be officially cheaper than energy generated from coal.

This is why, long-term, my money's on wind power.