Energy debate may soon turn on 'cleaner' coal

Burning coal may have become more efficient, but no one has yet discovered how to eliminate or even reduce carbon dioxide, which contributes to global warming.

From Jon Karl
CNN Washington Bureau

SHIPPINGPORT, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- Coal is the most plentiful and cheapest fossil fuel. It once provided most of America's power, but at a cost.

The cheapest fuel was also the dirtiest, the most devastating to the environment. But coal power is getting cleaner, at least at one Pittsburgh-area power plant.

Republican Sen. Rick Santorum is among a group of coal-state politicians who argues that coal can make the U.S. less dependent on imported oil.

"We have just in Pennsylvania alone, 300 years worth of coal sitting in the ground that we aren't really utilizing now because of concern for the environment, and it's a legitimate concern, but one that we can overcome," Santorum said.

Santorum has a powerful ally in the White House. President Bush has included $2 billion in his budget over the next 10 years for research and development in technology to make coal burn cleaner. Environmentalists say the money should instead be spent on cleaner energy sources.

"Clean coal is actually an oxymoron. You can't burn coal cleanly enough," said the Sierra Club's Dan Becker.

"In fact, when you burn coal, you emit more acid rain pollution, more air pollution, more smog and more global warming pollution which threatens the entire planet," said Becker, global warming program director for the Sierra Club.

But coal advocates point to high-tech operations such as the Bruce Mansfield Power Plant, north of Pittsburgh. It provides enough electricity to power nearly 1 million homes. Plant officials say one out of every three dollars spent to build the facility was spent on environmental protection.

Filters remove most of the pollutant that causes acid rain, and new technology soon to be put in place will remove most of the pollutant that causes smog. The plant also recycles the ash by-product of burned coal.

"We convey it across the street under the main highway there and to the national gypsum facility," the plant manager said.

The ash byproduct is turned into 100 percent-recycled wallboard for use in home construction.

Technology has made it possible for power plants such as this to reduce conventional pollutants such as sulfur dioxide. But it is still very different from what is the Holy Grail of clean coal technology -- that is, a power plant that has no smokestacks because it produces no emissions.

What most concerns environmentalists now about coal power is carbon dioxide, or CO2, the gas that causes global warming.

"We have no controls in place now or any plan for CO2," said the plant manager. "To my knowledge there is no technology presently available that could remove CO2."

"Carbon dioxide is the one thing that we've done nothing about so far, from really any of our economy aside by from increasing efficiency, and its the one thing that will substantially change the climate on time scales of 100 years or so," said David Keith, an engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

Research is under way at the National Energy Technology Laboratory on so-called "carbon sequestration" technology that would capture CO2 gas before it is released into the atmosphere and inject it, either deep into the ocean or into the ground. It is the kind of technology that could make possible the elusive emission-free power plant.

"I don't expect to see one of those plants in operation, one that is purposefully built for this, for anything sooner than 15 years," Keith said.

And it may take longer than 15 years to develop the technology. Until then, coal can be made to burn cleaner, but it will still be a leading contributor to global warming.

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