Our Beef with Brian Williams

Okay, it's not really a beef. We just need to clear something up.

This week, NBC Nightly News aired a report on coal, which examined coal-based electricity and its ability to burn cleanly.

Anchorman Brian Williams began the report by calling clean coal “an oxymoron,” failing to acknowledge the suite of technologies that have been developed over the last 30 years to remove harmful emissions from coal-based power plants. 

These technologies have already made coal a cleaner energy resource—overall our plants are 70 percent cleaner today than they were in the 1970s based on regulated emissions per unit of energy produced. And with new advances in technology, we’re looking at a future in which coal will meet America’s growing electricity needs with little to no emissions of the pollutants regulated by federal and state clean air laws.

However, the NBC team redeemed themselves a bit by traveling to Germany to profile the country’s $100 million pilot carbon capture and sequestration plant, which eliminates 95 percent of carbon dioxide from power plant emissions and buries them underground.

NBC also noted the lack of U.S. funding for pilot plants here in America, cutting to a researcher from the MIT Energy Initiative who said, “I believe we have really no time to waste in pursuing a whole set of low-carbon technology options.”

In the end, NBC showed America that carbon capture and sequestration is not only possible, but necessary in order to utilize our most abundant, affordable energy source, and that it’s time to support the funding of the next generation of clean coal technologies.

Comments

[anon]

Coal is not clean. You brag about cutting 70 percent of pollutants, but those are acid-rain causing pollutants, and they have to be cut BY LAW. The industry is 70 percent cleaner because you have to be. Now, cut 70 percent of your C02 emissions, which the Supreme Court now says is a pollutant, and I'll give the industry from credit, and credibility.

[Megan at ACCCE]

Anon:

“Clean” is a relative term. What is clean to me might not be clean to everyone else. The goal is to reach the point where we have zero-emissions power plants or near-zero emissions. But EPA figures show that coal is 70 percent cleaner than it was 30 years ago, and that's due in part to the $50 billion in technological investments made by coal-based electricity providers.

As you mentioned, the challenge now is CO2, and we're moving to the point for technology to help capture 100 percent of those emissions. Just check out the News section of America's Power to stay up to date on advancements in clean coal technology.