Is clean coal even real?

There’s a certain candidate in this year’s Presidential election (we won’t say who) whose main energy platform seems to be “clean coal”. But does that actually exist?

 

Before addressing this, let’s back up for a second. What is it about coal that’s unclean in the first place?

 

...The answer is, pretty much everything. Coal is the most toxic fuel we could possibly use to generate electricity, by far. First of all, burning coal emits a LOT of carbon dioxide – about 50% more than gasoline and twice as much as natural gas. Carbon dioxide is the biggest contributor to climate change. The predicted effects range from mild discomfort to total catastrophe, depending where you live.

 

When it comes to coal, however, there are even more pressing problems than carbon emissions.

 

Coal plants emit something that’s broadly known as “PM 2.5”. PM 2.5 consists of soot combined with toxic chemicals to make particulate matter less than 2.5 microns in diameter (aka, the perfect size to lodge itself snugly inside your lungs). The inhalation of PM 2.5 leads to asthma, lung cancer, and a host of other respiratory problems.

 

You have probably seen photos of the horrendous pollution in Beijing and other Chinese cities. I spent a summer in Beijing – which, by the way, is far from the most polluted city in China – and each morning I would go on the American Embassy’s website to read the daily projection for PM 2.5, which ranged from “good” (go outside and play) to “unhealthy” (limit the time you spend outside) to “hazardous” (just don’t go outside, period). That’s the price China is paying for rapid economic growth fuelled by thousands of coal plants.

 

But let’s not sit back and blame China. The United States gets 33% of its electricity from coal from over 600 coal plants, concentrated mainly in the Midwest and the East Coast. We burn a great deal of coal ourselves, and a lot of U.S. jobs depend on it. Hence the appeal of a “clean coal” slogan.

 

In fact, all around the world, coal is the most abundant and widely distributed fossil fuel. Despite global policy focused on addressing climate change, the use of coal is on the rise. That’s because demand for electricity is rising as developing economies increase their wealth. Given the choice between coal or no electricity at all, anyone would choose coal.

 

So, back to the original question...clean coal, how about it?

 

Solving the PM 2.5 problem actually seems to be manageable from a technology perspective. Coal can be washed, and special types of filters can be applied to prevent the majority of soot from being released into the atmosphere. Today, these techniques are well understood and widely applied (at least in developed countries).

 

As always, though, there’s a tradeoff. In the case of “clean-er coal”, that means a drastic increase in the price. In the United States, stricter legislation has caused the price of coal to increase to the point that it is no longer economic. It turns out that it is WAY easier (and cheaper) to comply with environmental laws by burning natural gas instead. Natural gas plants are also much more efficient than coal plants. You get about 60% of the energy out that you put in, compared with just 40% for coal.

 

What’s more, at least for the moment, the raw price of natural gas is extremely low (and there’s lots of it). In the United States, burning coal makes less and less sense by the day. Unsurprisingly, coal plants are shutting down in droves.

 

Then, on top of all this, there’s the carbon issue.

 

Washing and filtering coal doesn’t address its carbon footprint. Let’s pretend for a moment that we could apply all those washing and filtering techniques cheaply, build more efficient coal plants, and the price of natural gas rises high enough that burning coal becomes economic again. There’s still the tiny little detail that the United States, along with countries around the world, have agreed to reduce carbon emissions to fight climate change. And if you recall from the beginning of this post, coal is the worst offender amongst all possible energy sources – far worse than both gasoline and natural gas.

 

So, what can be done about the carbon? Because that’s what it’s going to come down to in the end, at least in countries outside the United States that don’t have the option to switch to natural gas.

 

Here is where a neat little power plant called the Boundary Dam Power Station in Saskatchewan, Canada comes into the picture.

 

The path to making coal “clean” from a carbon standpoint is a technology called Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS). The Boundary Dam Power Station, operated by a company called Saskpower, is a commercial power plant that captures 90% of its carbon emissions using CCS techniques. It is also capable of capturing up to 100% of the toxic chemicals that make up PM 2.5. In what appears to be a miracle, the so-called “World’s First Clean Coal Plant” found a way to abide by very strict Canadian environmental in a way that’s economically feasible (with a little help from the Canadian government).

 

Pretty much problem solved, right?

 

Well, not quite. As always, the real picture is a bit more complicated.

 

The way the Boundary Dam plant works it that about half of the 90% of captured carbon emissions are “sequestered”, or compressed and buried in the ground (sort of like turning it back into coal). The remaining half are converted to a liquid form and shipped via pipeline to oil companies where it can be used to enhance oil recovery from drilling wells. Similarly, the soot that is captured is also converted into chemicals sold for use in the oil industry (that’s how the plant makes money). This has got critics saying that the 90% figure is misleading and that the plant is actually a backdoor subsidy for oil companies.

 

Also, the plant isn’t doing what it said it would. Due to technical complications, it only operates 40% of the time. Moreover, Saskpower made a deal with the oil company Cenovus to provide 800,000 tonnes of captured carbon, but was only able to deliver half that. As a result, Saskpower had to renegotiate its contract with Cenovus and pay $12 million in penalties.

 

Those penalties trickle down to consumers. Because the plant is expensive to operate and has been missing its targets, the local price of electricity has increased by 10% for Sasatchewan households. It will likely keep going up, and possibly even double over the next ten years.

 

Guess what, though: Saskpower is pretty much the only company in the world that’s even halfway successful in deploying a commercial CCS plant. The closest thing we have in the U.S. is the Kemper Project in Mississippi, which is still under construction. Even if the captured carbon at Boundary Dam does get sold back to the oil industry, so what? If it’s helping oil companies be more efficient at processes they would be doing anyway, I think that’s preferable to forcing you and I to inhale the stuff.

 

Plus, in spite of all its downsides, the project is drawing international interest. The Japan Coal Energy Center, along with Mistubishi Heavy Industries and Mistubishi Hitachi Power Systems have announced a new collaboration project with Saskpower’s CCS Knowledge Center. They will assess the feasibility of applying Japanese technology to CCS projects in Saskatchewan and for future applications worldwide. The Japanese Consortium believes that CCS is a key technology to meeting global climate goals, and Saskatchewan is pretty much ground zero to get the ball rolling.

 

So, given all that...is “clean coal” a meaningful energy platform? Absolutely not. There is really no such thing as “clean” coal -- just “clean-er”. And in the United States, my assessment is that even cleaner coal is nowhere close to being a viable option. We have too many other cheaper, more sensible alternatives. The best we can do is replace what we can with natural gas and focus on retraining the workforce in solar and wind technologies.

 

That’s not to say that cleaner coal is not without a future here. Like Canada, the United States can set a technology precedent. The picture looks very different in developing countries without access to cheap natural gas. These countries need the help of first-movers like Saskpower and the Kemper Project alongside high-performance Japanese technology.

 

We should be doing everything we can to make the cleanest coal possible a reality – if not for our benefit, then for the rest of the planet.