Does Coal Have a Role in “Clean” Energy?
John Hutton, a business Secretary and cabinet minister in the UK, recently said that coal must remain a part of his nation’s energy system.
Although he wants the UK to lead the world in renewable energy, he argues that some form of coal will be needed to work with renewables. The Liberal Democrats, on the other hand, argue that coal cannot be clean without carbon capture and storage. The problem is that technology is still years away from commercialization and the amount of money the UK is investing in its research is small.
This sparring comes while Hutton’s department is considering an application to build the UK’s first new coal plant in 24 years.
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The question the UK and the rest of us have to grapple with is: Is coal a part of our energy future at all? Should coal plants have to commit to carbon capture and storage in order to be approved?
Even if we don’t want it to be, I think coal will be a part of our energy future. Nobody’s going to deny China and India cheap energy (nor should they), so coal’s not going away until, as Google.org puts it, RE<C. Making plants commit to carbon capture and storage sounds like a good start. Hopefully it’ll spur the innovation necessary to clean the future Indian and Chinese coal.
I hope not. But that may not matter. My problems with coal go beyond the burning of it. The other “externalities” of coal are not always taken into account. These include but are not limited to, the high cost of subsidized coal transport, and the social costs of coal mining (i.e. dead coalminers).