On the morning of the Presidential election I was waiting in line for coffee in a rural west North Carolina cafe when a “clean” coal ad blared from a wall-mounted flat screen tuned to CNN.
A local woman, Connie, I had been chatting with about the clean energy campaign I represented commented at the conclusion of the ad, “You know they play these ads all the time (around here), and McCain and Obama talk about it all the time, but I just don’t understand it. How is it possible to make that stuff clean?”
“It’s not.” I told her.
Despite the millions spent to convince Connie and other Americans that clean coal is an answer to our energy dependence, in reality, there’s no such thing as clean coal.
Thankfully, the folks who know the truth about clean coal are finally fighting back with a full frontal: http://www.thisisreality.org
The just launched This is Reality campaign is taking on the Goliath of King Coal and aims to take off the king’s dirty head.
The “Reality Coalition” behind the campaign – led by Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection, the Sierra Club, the League of Conservation Voters, NRDC, and the National Wildlife Federation – understands the importance enacting bold climate and energy policy absent of clean coal, and are fighting the industry’s myths in a concerted effort that leading environmental organizations and politicians have thus far been afraid to take on.
Except for some great grassroots groups doing their damndest to get it out there, the truth about clean coal has been absent from the mainstream conversation because fighting against an all-out lie on the national stage is hard, scary, and expensive. And because King Coal is big, scary, and wealthy.
Unfortunately that fear has allowed Big Coal to spend more than the Tobacco industry did making us think cigarettes were ok, to make us believe the “Saudi Arabia of coal” – the United States – will lead a clean, prosperous, independent future by continuing to destroy mountains and extract one of the world’s leading causes of carbon pollution.
The GOP took clean coal as gospel right off the bat because its base preached it as such. And Democrats took it as the pie in the sky they could aspire to while winning over swing votes in states like Virginia and North Carolina.
“Clean coal. Whee!”
Now, because we didn’t squash it before the lie grew into fixtures in the speeches of political candidates on both sides of the aisle, the fight will unfortunately be longer and more expensive than it should have been… but it’s a serious, important fight the climate community has now officially taken on, and it’s great to have the right generals at the helm.
This is the This is Reality campaign’s first video ad released today, December 5:
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There should be a mountain top removal site on the other side of the door in this ad. Clean coal rhetoric isn’t bad because it simply doesn’t exist. It’s bad because it contrasts so grossly and despicably to the destructive practices used to extract coal – the hypothetical cleanliness of smokestack emissions aside. The guy should walk through that door right into a scenes that looks like these – not a pristine-looking wilderness are. Stressing the glaring incongruity between clean coal rhetoric and mountain top removal should help us make progress on both (something I’ve been consistently trying to do in my blogging). Maybe Gore’s next ad will go there instead…
Yes, when I saw the ad, I thought it was focusing on mining out west, which tears up pristine wilderness just like the one pictured. I thought they were going to say that clean coal is the stuff left in the ground under this lovely desert.
But, they just said it doesn’t exist. Yet! If you look on the website, it talks about how coal could be clean if we invest enough.
The ads are funny and I’m glad the message is out there, but if I had a bagillion dollars to spend to talk about coal, I’d actually say something about coal.
Jesse, I think that’s a great idea to have more ads in this series that focus on MTR. Absolutely. I suspect that there will be quite a few ads to follow, and that really should be a focal point of one of them (or all of them)
One thing I disagree on is that I don’t think the false veil Big Coal has pulled down over the eyes of legislators on clean coal – convincing them that it’s possible – is any less bad than their perpetration of MTR. They’re both despicable in different ways.
Hopefully, the next ads and campaign focus will bring MTR into full view – figuratively and literally.
I agree with this effort, BUT I am concerned that this particular commercial is *VERY* ineffective. I am only here at this website because my wife and I had a disagreement over the AD. I honestly thought it was a “feel good” ad about clean coal…. not an educational spot against it. And I am an intelligent, college educated guy. The tongue-in-cheek quality of this ad is simply too subtle…
I think those who produced this advertisement should come and visit an open pit coal mine. I will show you the before, the in process, and the after and you make the decision. Not only that talk to the people who have lived in the area before the mine arrived and how useful and productive the land was before being mined and after being mined. The fact is the land is in better shape after mining than before the mining took place, at least in our area. That does not mean everyone performs up to these standards, and that is where the government regulators should do their jobs. That however has nothing to to with clean coal and clean coal technology. Clean coal is the process of taking the coal from the ground, “filtering” the coal to remove rocks, pyrites, etc. that increase ash content, SO2 emissions, and all the other things that are in the coal when it is removed from the ground. I agree that power plants should have emissions control equipment installed and operating correctly to limit the environmental impact. I am an engineer in the power industry and am very familiar with all these issues so I am not espousing something I do not know about. My question to all of you is what method do you propose to produce the electricity that society and each of you demand. I know that the first suggestion is that we use wind power and that should be part of the solution but wind power does not provide reliable, consistent power, in fact the high production time for wind power is the low power demand and since you cannot store electricity as you can other power sources this presents tremendous problems. Yes, you could use batteries, or even capacitors but just do a first run calculation on the size and numbers of capacitors or batteries and you will quickly see how impractical this solution is. Next the choice might be solar, now do the same first run calculation on the number of solar cells required to replace just one power plant ( a small power plant produces 150 MW per hour) and again you see with the current efficiencies of solar cells that this is not the complete answer. As a person in the power industry I think we should be using all possible sources, wind, solar, nuclear, and fossil power. There is a place for each of these and we should improve each of the technologies. My final comment on this is those of you who are so adamantly against the nuclear solution should do some real research because if you knew anything about the nuclear industry you would know how safe it is and how much it has improved since its inception, and those of you who would like to argue the facts I would be more than happy to oblige.
James Norris, that’s a very long paragraph, but as the grannies in Appalachia say, “We remember a time when we lived without electricity, but we don’t think we can live without air and water.”
In West Virginia, people are already carrying their water to their home for bathing, cooking, drinking in gallon jugs because the water in their homes is full of heavy metals and toxic chemicals from coal.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aLaH9bxzNU
Lets find a way to save our air and water, and the sweet little girls who are bathing in it. Something has to give in this energy equation, and I don’t think it should be our respect for human life.
This post reminded me of this recent article on energy transitions:
http://www.american.com/archive/2008/november-december-magazine/moore2019s-curse-and-the-great-energy-delusion
My guess is that we are not going to give up electricity [my late father also lived in a small town with no electricity and he was NOT nostalgic
]. We will need more realistic ideas and plans to transition away from carbon-based fuels.
Danawv, I agree that we need to balance things but being nostalgic for a simpler time, or simply saying we must stop producing electricity is not the answer. I for one would love to be able to create perfectly clean energy with no harm to anyone or anything but is this a realistic possibility? The answer is no because if you take away all the things that are being challenged now you would still have the heat balance. In fact if you know much about thermodynamics, and we could get incredibly technical here, you will find that entropy is continually increasing in the universe and – if Newtonian physics is to hold – at some point entropy wins…. The Earth was here long before humans and it is my personal opinion that it will be here long after humans are gone. The Earth has a great capacity to self regulate and though this regulation occurs on a geologic time scale it still occurs. We as humans should strive to do as little harm as possible but by our very nature we are going to create harm to the planet, whether that is by cutting down trees, warming water, whatever, it is still harm. The Earth will eventually return itself to a static equilibrium state. I personally, being from a rural background am appalled and saddened by the paving of our farms and fields but I can only do what I can do to convince others that this is the wrong approach. By being an alarmist and saying we can’t build another highway, bridge, or building will not be successful, rather showing people their affect on our planet would be much more effective. Just so you know I do believe that global warming is occurring and I think we should do our best to control this phenomenon within the limits of the society we live in. As for the comment about the air and water you should be directing your ire and focus on the regulatory agencies that are not doing their jobs. It is illegal to allow heavy metal to contaminate waterways and when it occurs the companies should be fined, forced to remediate the situation, and their leaders (CEOs, etc) should go to jail. It is not the industry that is so vial it is the bad actors within the industry that are not being policed by the regulators that are the problem.
Google flue gas desulfurization. Nearly all plants are retro fitted to have these. The same company that leads the nation and world in the construction of these units also have a system to remove Co2. A system which is in use in only a few plants but also they spend millions into making the system more efficient. Clean coal does currently exist and is in use. It is not 100% perfect but with time it will get there.
Dear Nick,
Ah, if only it were so easy. Sulphur is a waste by-product of fossil fuel consumption, not the result of burning the fuel to produce energy. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, does produce an Hindered Amines flue gas solvent that absorbs CO2 at the smokestack —> whereupon it is heated and released somewhere else. It is a processing cycle, with no storage capabilities. Basically, it is a marginally improved process on where they get the CO2 for soda. So they use it in soda or urea for chemical plants. Guess where the CO2 goes? Back into the atmosphere.
If your doctor told you had high cholesterol and they gave you a drug that didn’t reduce your cholesterol…but transported a tiny percentage of it to different parts of your body, you probably wouldn’t call it safe. Clean Coal doesn’t exist and without a safe, secure storage place for C02, it never will. Also, on the other side of the cycle, you are from West Virginia, tell me if Mountain Top Removal looks ‘clean’.
Mitsubishi is not the company with the technology. Try again. Maybe you need a course of how a boiler works. Sulfur is one of the main by products directly associated with burning coal. The government and coal companies around the world wouldn’t of poured money into removing it from the exhaust gas. The technology used to obtain the Co2 actually traps it and as of right now they pump it straight down into a very deep well in the earth. Not up but down. True, still not a great idea but it’s a work in progress. There has been technology to clean particulates out of exhaust gasses for years and technology that is beginning to surface to clean the mercury.
Clean coal technology does exist like I said it is not 100%. If my doctor were to tell me I have several harmful chemicals in my body and if I were to take these two drugs it would remove chemical A and chemical B with out any harmful side effects. Of course I would. And if my doctor also told me that drugs will be available in a couple of years to remove the rest…. I’m already excited. Yes burning coal is dirty, digging it out of the ground is dirty, even transportation of coal is dirty. It’s not the coal companies business to clean the coal. They cant. Coal is dirty by nature. They are responsible to dig it up and transport it to where it gets burned. They already throw out tons of high sulfur coal that is not allowed to be burned.
I do agree, that until Co2 is removed it will not be at 100%. But guess what? They can remove it but its not nearly efficient enough to apply it on every plant in the nation. The technology we have in place and the technology soon to surface is a step in the right direction. Give credit where credit is due. Maybe we should call it Cleaner coal than what it was 10 years ago Technology.If you really want someone to point the finger towards, point it at your government. More money needs to be funneled into the research and construction of these technologies.
we are turning water into dust