Is it possible to cleanly convert coal to energy?
It depends on what you mean by clean. If you mean zero CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions, no. If you mean without putting demand on water resources in the region where you’re doing that, no. If you’re talking about does it mean no surface disturbance, obviously not, because of strip mining. What does Schweitzer mean by clean energy? Well, I think by clean energy he must mean getting rid of the limitations of the process that will somehow reduce the amount of pollutants and CO2 that would be produced if we burned that coal to produce energy directly with conventional methods. Can the proposed process be applied on such a large scale with limited impact to the earth? Probably not. Part of the process that is used to convert the coal is actually releasing CO2. So while it may reduce the amount of CO2 released compared to when we would burn the coal directly to produce electricity, it doesn’t really reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere substantially. We’re still producing quite a bit of
