NBC Spotlights The Truth Behind "Clean Coal"

The speeches made about "clean coal" during the campaign are long over, but the myth of "clean coal" persists. Both Obama and McCain are to blame for continuing it, but NBC actually did something to show the reality of where the technology is today. This edition of their "Green Week" was more than just showcasing the dreams of energy companies but a honest assessment what it is and where it's at.

From The Huffington Post:

Brian Williams began with a remarkable lead-in:

"Coal. While you might have heard the phrase 'clean coal' during the presidential campaign, it's actually an oxymoron. Wishful thinking. Coal does not burn cleanly and it's hugely expensive to make it burn that way..."

And Anne Thompson herself offers an equally honest lead-in:

"Coal: the fuel the world burns to make electricity. Plentiful and polluting. A major contributor to climate change."

She then profiles a $100 million CCS pilot project in Spremberg, Germany operated by Vattenfall. It is located adjacent to a what Thompson calls a "dirty coal plant." The pilot project apparently captures 95 percent of its CO2 emissions and stores the liquefied CO2 in giant tanks -- before it is trucked 200 miles away and pumped underground.

Thompson then notes that "this process could increase electric rates by 50 percent."

And the icing on the cake? A German environmentalist calling the burning of coal without CCS a "crime against the climate."

The one thing missing of course was talking about where the coal comes from in the first place, such as mountain-top removal that occurs in Applachia with maximum damage to the environment. Besides not talking about extraction, the segment did a fantastic job in telling us what the candidates did not. The great majority of coal plants do not have CCS and getting the technology to them will take decades. Meanwhile they'll continue to pollute our planet while the much more cost-effective and planet-friendly alternatives like sun and wind powerplants are cheated out of crucial investment dollars.

Please, let's leave the rest of the coal in the ground and get to work on projects that will give us a cleaner Earth and energy that is 100% renewable.