The Dirty War Against Clean Coal

-Nick Jeon

3rd post

The White House is recycling one of their previous ideas: clean coal energy, a technology that has already been developed. The Bush Administration had canceled financing, but this month, the Energy Secretary Steven Chu brought this project back to life – though the cost might go into the billions. According to Mr. Easterbrook, FutureGen was better off canceled – he cites multiple examples of government failure at commercial-scale alternative energy, including The Synthetic Fuels Corporation and the MOD-5B. This technology would turn coal into a gas like natural gas, which would lead to almost zero emissions, require about a third of the coal, and produce the same amount of energy. General Electric for Duke Energy is being created in Indiana, but a lot of states are refusing to allow these plants to be built. Mr. Easterbrook speculates that the reason Virginia rejected the plant was due to the monetary reasons, but he claims that it will pay for itself as Obama’s cap-and-trade would tax carbon. According to the author, renewable energy cannot possibly grow enough for us to replace coal as it is too much of our power supply. So we should start building new and improved coal plants instead of doing nothing and waiting for FutureGen to figure it out.

Mr. Easterbrook makes a good analysis on the direction that we should take in alternative energy. Yet, he makes a mistake when declaring our addiction to coal unbreakable. He explains that solar and other sources of energy cannot replace out need of coal. Yet, there are other forms of alternative energy out there that are also sitting on the shelf. For example, NASA has developed a technology called space-based solar power. By shooting up satellites with huge arrays of solar panels into space, and beaming the energy back down to earth using microwave technology, we could solve the world’s global energy crisis. Some scientists believe that this technology can fuel the entirety of the US. Working to make coal a little cleaner is nice, but we should shoot for the stars.