Saturday, November 7, 2009

Problems with Coal-Based Electricity Generation

The Big Stone II Coal Fired Power Plant Project met it's demise this week in NE South Dakota. On the one hand I 'm not sorry to see it shot down. On the other in the process of building another Power plant they were supposed to clean up the plant already on line.
Ottertail Power Company announced that they would abandoned the project this week.

The following is a blurp on coal from another site.

Courtesy of http://www.grinningplanet.com,
Thanks,
Guys

Beyond the environmental problems with coal mining, burning coal to generate electricity is notoriously dirty. While great improvements have been made over the years in air-pollution-control technologies for coal plants, many old, fume-belching plants remain online. Despite industry proclamations of the wonders of "clean coal" technology—coal-gasification combined cycle (CGCC) power plants are indeed a quantum leap from plants with even state-of-the-art emissions scrubbers—almost none of the coal plants currently under construction or on the drawing boards around the world are this super-clean type.


Even if you give the coal industry and its political allies the benefit of the doubt and assume a wholesale move to clean coal-burning technology, that would still leave the intractable issue of the pollution and environmental damage caused by coal mining. There are no easy solutions for that problem, and increasing the demand for coal will also increase the environmental problems associated with coal mining.

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