Clean coal.. that’s funny.. since burning "anything" creates green house gas. Face it, there are only three “clean” ways to turn water into steam. One of them only works on sunny days, the second involves drilling holes where protected species live,  and the simplest one, is not in the best “interest” of OPEC.

So when did Tech Review become the official stomping grounds for NEI lobbyists?

Why do we need clean coal if, on this very website and in a video it is explained that we have the equivalent of 81 billion barrels of oil in the form of shale deposited natural gas.And to boot it burns half the co2 that oil does. If anyone would chime in on the efficiency over coal i would like to know.

I find this site amazing , but a lot of knowledge is useless because the political and financial powers in charge care nothing about math,science or the environment.   

    The Us has the largest coal reserves of any nation.  At current consumption rates we can supply all our energy needs for 250 years.  Coal is cheap and the money stays at home.  Jobs are created from mining it and more jobs will be had as the cost of the energy to produce products decreases.
    I do not see how the US an remain an economic factor in the world if we fail to capitalize on our coal resources and renovate our steel industry.
    The entire idea of clean coal revolves around releasing less greenhouse gases.

Old Chinese proverb.
"You cant make a silk purse out of a sows ear."

Yes, there is a lot of coal in the US. The Powder River Basin in Wyoming holds a huge quantity of that coal.  Currently producing mines have thick seams at a relatively shallow depth.  Unfortunately, as this coal is mined,  increasing quantities of overburden have to removed as these coal seams slope ever deeper.  There is around 10-15 years of relatively easy to mine coal left in the Powder River Basin at current production levels. The US Geological Survey in 2008 substantially revised downward its estimate of economically available coal.  (Visit www.cleanenergyaction.org/html/coal_supplies.html for USGS data and interpretation.)

Unfortunately, the skunk at the "clean" coal party is the dirties.  Dirty air, dirty water, dirty solid waste--currently and for the foreseeable future.  One of the worst is mercury/methylmercury, a strong neurotoxin that easily passes through both the blood brain barrier and the human placenta.  US coal plants pump about 80 tons of mercury per year into the atmosphere.  Where do the captured dirties go once the coal combustion process has been "cleaned"?   Your back yard or mine?  Your aquifer or mine?

Coal enjoys substantial direct and indirect subsidies from governments and citizens.  Citizen subsidies were reported recently by the National Research Council as 4¢ per kw-hr in additional healthcare costs resulting from coal-fired electricity generation.

Removing the CO2, SO2, mercury, particulates from stack gas requires serious machinery and substantial sorbent materials in addition to fly ash and clinker management.  This solid waste mix is highly toxic and exposes ground water to concentrated sources of heavy metal compounds.  Where water is used to control fly ash, flooding and leaching can cause long term serious environmental damage.

The harsh reality is that coal represents a short-term solution. The energy cost of CO2 capture and sequestration has been estimated to require 25% of a coal plant's output.  This is a significant lowering of plant efficiency and escalates the cost of electricity accordingly.

The question for China's and America's leaders is does it make economic sense to expend huge sums to research, develop, test and evaluate then deploy a very expensive sub-system add-on for hundreds of coal plants when fuel supplies may only be affordable for a decade or two?  Does this really make sense?

Might not those funds be better applied deploying distributed generation such as roof-top solar photovoltaic systems which require little infrastructure modifications, concentrating-solar base load plants, geographically-diverse wind turbines, and natural gas  combustion turbines for peak load generation and backup?

Are we on track to make wise choices?