Climate of Our Future

The rising price of oil over the recent years has many consumers seeking more affordable and, in some cases, more effective energy solutions. Despite much of the developed world making attempts to wean itself off coal burning, the United States remains a major user of coal to fuel its electricity and heat. 

In fact, world coal use in the last twenty years has kept pace with total energy use and has grown by two-thirds. The lion’s share of coal use belongs to the United States (at 1,011 million metric tonnes) and China (2,356 million metric tonnes), whose use of coal rose threefold since 1980.  

Source: National Geographic: Energy for Tomorrow, 2009. 

Coal symbolizes the industrial age. It powered steamships up the Hudson and railroads across the west. And was singularly responsible for the infamous “London smog” showcased in much of English literature. A Londoner created the word “smog” in 1905 to describe the city’s insidious combination of natural fog and coal smoke. By then, the phenomenon was part of London history, and acrid smoke-filled “pea-soupers” were as familiar to Londoners as Big Ben and Westminster Abby. Even Shakespeare wrote about the smog: his witches in Macbeth chant, “Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air.”

Smog in London predates Shakespeare by four centuries. By the 12th century, as the city grew and the forests shrank, wood for burning became scarce and increasingly expensive. Londoners began to use the plentiful but inefficiently burning sea-coal from off the northeast coast to heat their homes and fuel their factories. This practice produced more smoke than heat. In 1272, following complaints about the smoky air, King Edward I banned the burning of sea-coal and anyone caught burning or selling it was tortured or executed. Despite these deterrents, Londoners continued to burn sea-coal well into the turn of the century.

It was only after a four-day fog in 1952 killed some 4,000 Londoners, that reform was passed. Parliament enacted the Clean Air Act in 1956, effectively reducing the burning coal. It was the beginning of serious air-pollution reform in England.

EPA http://www.epa.gov/history/topics/perspect/london.htm  
 

Coal-fired plants now remove 95 percent or more of the pollutants that cause acid rain. They remove sulfur by crushing and washing the coal prior to burning it, and then use smokestack scrubbers to trap the rest. Fluidized-bed systems burn the coal at somewhat cooler temperatures, which reduce the release of nitrogen oxide, the main ingredient of smog.  

This may be “clean” compared to historical emissions. But, any way you look at it, coal is still “dirty” and current practices do little to eliminate planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions. Why are we still using this incredibly “dirty” fuel?  

Coal remains our most abundant and easily harvested fuel and the United States has the largest reserves of coal in the world (an estimated 275 billion tonnes still in the ground). Coal burning provides the best solution to achieving energy independence, according to U.S. President Obama.  He promises to “develop and deploy clean coal technology” through a research incentive of $150-billion. Meantime, Nobel Prize winner Al Gore and other experts argue that “clean coal” is an oxymoron.  Coal proponents have come up with a concept that involves carbon capture and storage (CCS). This involves the removal of CO₂, which is piped into a storage area and then injected deep underground—a process they assure will reduce CO₂ emissions by 90 percent. However, critics point out that carbon capture will significantly reduce coal burning efficiency, countering emission reduction with more burning. 

Today coal is mostly used as a solid fuel to produce electricity and heat through combustion. World consumption is about 6.2 billion tonnes annually. About forty percent of the world’s electricity comes from coal (it’s about 50% in the United States).  

Some of the major adverse environmental effects of coal mining and burning include:

• Release of carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) responsible for climate change and global warming (coal use forms the largest contribution to CO₂ increase in the air by humans)
• Promotion of acid rain from high sulfur coal
• Contamination of land and waterways from fly ash spills
• Dust nuisance
• Emissions of toxic substances such as mercury, selenium and arsenic

 
In a stirring testimony before the Iowa State Board of Utilities at a permit hearing for a coal plant in Iowa in 2005, renowned climate scientist James E. Hansen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hansen) presented “clear scientific evidence describing the impact that coal-fired power plants (without carbon capture and storage) will have on the Earth’s climate, and thus on the well-being of today’s and future generations of people and on all creatures and species of creation. Burning of fossil fuels, primarily coal, oil and gas, increases the amount of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other gases and particles in the air. These gases and particles affect the Earth’s energy balance, changing both the amount of sunlight absorbed by the planet and the emission of heat (long wave or thermal radiation) to space. The net effect is a global warming that has become substantial during the past three decades. Global warming from continued burning of more and more fossil fuels poses clear dangers for the planet and for the planet’s present and future inhabitants. Coal is the largest contributor to the human-made increase of CO₂ in the air. Saving the planet and creation surely requires phase-out of coal use except where the CO₂ is captured and sequestered (stored in one of several possible ways).” 

In response to the challenge that coal is only one of the fossil fuels we need to deal with, Hansen responded, “Coal reserves contain much more carbon than do oil and natural gas reserves, and it is impractical to capture CO₂ emissions from the tailpipes of vehicles. Nor is there any prospect that Saudi Arabia, Russia, the United States and other major oil-producers will decide to leave their oil in the ground. Thus unavoidable CO₂ emissions from oil and gas in the next few decades will take atmospheric CO₂ amounts close to, if not beyond, the level needed to cause dangerous climate change. The only practical way to prevent CO₂ levels from going far into the dangerous range, with disastrous effects for humanity and other inhabitants of the planet, is to phase out use of coal except at power plants where the CO₂ is captured and sequestered.” 

You can read James Hansen’s entire testimony on coal-fired power plants and their effects on our planet on the following site at Columbia University.

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2007/IowaCoal_20071105.pdf  
 

James E. Hansen (born March 29, 1941 in Denison, Iowa) heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, a part of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, Earth Sciences Division. He has held this position since 1981. He is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University. Hansen is best known for his research in the field of climatology.  His testimony on climate change to congressional committees in 1988 helped raise broad awareness of global warming, and he advocates action to limit the impacts of climate change. 

Nina Munteanu is an environmental scientist and internationally published author of several novels, short stories and essays. She has published over fifty scientific papers and is a frequent speaker at scientific conferences. Her award-winning blog, The Alien Next Door, showcases Nina’s opinion pieces on pop culture and environmental issues.