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Comment by maerF0x0 | Hacker News Reader

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maerF0x0·

Why quit when you can use both?

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There is an abundant body of evidence showing that coal is a highly polluting source of energy.

Can coal be a net zero emission fuel?

Coal's carbon dioxide pollution can be limited through carbon capture technology. The U.S. government recently incentivized power producers to implement this technology with the expanded 45Q tax credit. We'll see if it pencils out well enough for broad adoption.

Technically, yes. But coal's main advantage over other electricity sources is that it's cheap. If you capture all the emissions it will no longer be cheap.

Here's one disastrously-over-budget attempt at a coal plant with CO2 capture:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemper_Project

Had they forced the plan to completion, it would have generated more expensive electricity than a new nuclear plant. More expensive than battery-backed solar. More expensive than any other utility scale electricity source in the United States.

Bio-coal is conceptually easy to make: just burn the hydrogen out of plants leaving just carbon. Generally called charcoal. The next step is to compress it into a rock.

Of course it isn't cost effective when you can just dig the finished product out of the ground, but conceptually it is easy.

I am not a coal hater, however... My understanding is that there are trace amounts of uranium in coal, so burning coal puts that uranium into the air. Even a tiny amount of uranium per ton, translates to a lot when you consider how many tons of coal per year is burned.

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