Because it's cheap and it works and people will burn anything to avoid freezing. In recent years we have seen people proudly bragging about shutting down coal mines and running coal operations out of business. This is a completely false notion simply because the coal has been sitting there for thousands of years and will sit there for thousands more. So anyone who thinks they can "get rid of coal" is deluding themselves.
All it takes to get into the coal business is a lamp and a shovel. Blocking mineral rights sounds good politically, but the physical reality completely negates the effort. Another thing that costs a lot of money is jumping the gun on the long game. Both coal and nuclear fuel are long games that require massive infrastructure (a power plant uses a mile-long trainload of coal daily). So trying to isolate it without an adequate replacement plan, is a disaster in slow motion.
I've never liked the way utilities try to pass off their craft as "clean". If your fire requires air from the atmosphere, it's creating pollution. So methane (natural gas as it's called), while substantially less polluting than coal, is still not "clean" and produces CO and NOx as it is burned. However, the pollution controls for both coal and methane-fueled power plants has advanced substantially since the 1990s.
Today a coal plant can inject vaporized ammonia into the exhaust stream and catalyze the reaction to reduce NOx by well over 90%. And the same system works on gas plants as well. Carbon sequestration also works as does coal gasification, but the only serious effort to build a production plant using this technology was destroyed by corruption and graft in Meridian Mississippi. It would have been started on methane until steam could be generated, then the superheated steam (2000F+) is used to convert the coal to synthetic gas which is fed to a gas turbine engine. The exhaust from the gas turbine is captured to make steam and then the methane is shut off and the plant runs exclusively on gasified coal.
It's technology that would have solved domestic energy needs for a century. If we really want electric cars, coal and nuclear are the only way to get there at the moment. Renewable energy is still in its infancy even though we have been using hydro and wind power for centuries. Lately the political answer seems to be "let's force it to happen" which means the people at the bottom of the economy get fucked the most. Our current rates for electricity and methane are easily twice what they should be and should have been flat for the last 50 years.
Instead, the environmental movement has been hijacked into a bureau that spends its days looking for ways to fuck energy producers to score a buck. As opposed to actually cleaning pollution anywhere. They're simply bought off and the "superfund" sites remain polluted and waiting for reclamation (often for decades).
All it takes to get into the coal business is a lamp and a shovel. Blocking mineral rights sounds good politically, but the physical reality completely negates the effort. Another thing that costs a lot of money is jumping the gun on the long game. Both coal and nuclear fuel are long games that require massive infrastructure (a power plant uses a mile-long trainload of coal daily). So trying to isolate it without an adequate replacement plan, is a disaster in slow motion.
I've never liked the way utilities try to pass off their craft as "clean". If your fire requires air from the atmosphere, it's creating pollution. So methane (natural gas as it's called), while substantially less polluting than coal, is still not "clean" and produces CO and NOx as it is burned. However, the pollution controls for both coal and methane-fueled power plants has advanced substantially since the 1990s.
Today a coal plant can inject vaporized ammonia into the exhaust stream and catalyze the reaction to reduce NOx by well over 90%. And the same system works on gas plants as well. Carbon sequestration also works as does coal gasification, but the only serious effort to build a production plant using this technology was destroyed by corruption and graft in Meridian Mississippi. It would have been started on methane until steam could be generated, then the superheated steam (2000F+) is used to convert the coal to synthetic gas which is fed to a gas turbine engine. The exhaust from the gas turbine is captured to make steam and then the methane is shut off and the plant runs exclusively on gasified coal.
It's technology that would have solved domestic energy needs for a century. If we really want electric cars, coal and nuclear are the only way to get there at the moment. Renewable energy is still in its infancy even though we have been using hydro and wind power for centuries. Lately the political answer seems to be "let's force it to happen" which means the people at the bottom of the economy get fucked the most. Our current rates for electricity and methane are easily twice what they should be and should have been flat for the last 50 years.
Instead, the environmental movement has been hijacked into a bureau that spends its days looking for ways to fuck energy producers to score a buck. As opposed to actually cleaning pollution anywhere. They're simply bought off and the "superfund" sites remain polluted and waiting for reclamation (often for decades).
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