All predictions for future electricity production and coal burning are in doubt because of the current world economic depression, some people will use temporary low interest rates to reduce the cost of their favourite power source.    However, we can be sure that the upward trend in production and interest rates will be resumed in a few years.

Clean Coal or Carbon Sequestration aims to capture the carbon dioxide produced by burning coal in a power station and then permanently bury it deep underground.    No power company uses clean coal yet because it is cheaper just to throw their rubbish into the air.      Will it work?    All of the components of the process are well proven.    Norway has been burying large amounts of carbon dioxide from their North Sea gas field for many years.    Germany has built and operated a demonstration plant to capture carbon dioxide from a coal plant and many oil fields store and then use carbon dioxide to assist oil production.

World Wildlife Fund says that Clean Coal is worth investigating, Greenpeace and the Greens don’t want anything to do with coal and say that it is a waste of time and money that could be better spent on solar energy, our government is spending over $100 million to research it, the USA, China and the IPCC support further research.  

Everyone can nitpick costs but the following costs are indicative of the cost in cents of producing 1kWhr of electricity in Australia.

Existing Coal    black or brown            4-5
Natural Gas                                         5-6        
Clean Coal extra cost 3-5 cents          7-10
Wind turbine                                        7-10
Wind - base load including storage     20-30
Solar thermal - steam boiler                8-16
Solar cells   PV  including storage       25 -40    
Nuclear Power   per Zwitkowski          5-7
Nuclear    per author                           8-12

These figures show that nothing can compete with coal if the carbon dioxide is just thrown into the air.   If we believe that carbon dioxide will cause global warming we need to look at the global picture, local feel good programmes that cannot achieve a global climate result are pointless and may divert attention from the real issue.

The science is clear, the process can be made to work, the big questions are cost and the time required.    Clean Coal can be added to an existing power plant but it is more efficient to design a special power plant from the outset.    
Will it add so much to the cost of electricity that other methods would be cheaper?    We think not, but this is an engineering question not a scientific one.

No one is building such a plant yet, can we wait another 10 years to decide what to do?    Meanwhile China. India, the USA, Germany and others who talk big about their climate policies are continuing to build “Dirty Coal” power stations at an alarming rate which will double the total world production of carbon dioxide before 2050.
We can’t stop other countries burning their own coal – the best we can hope for is that we can help them to burn their coal Cleanly.

Not an ideal solution but this may be our best long term hope to combat global warming which some people don’t think is a problem anyhow.