Is “clean coal” just a marketing term?
Thursday, August 14th, 2008A sexy GE ad has sparked controversy and interest in what marketers are calling “clean coal”. The spot features Tennessee Ernie Ford’s protest song “Sixteen Tons” and attractive models posing shirtless as coal miners. A narrator asks us to, “Imagine if a 250-year supply of energy were right here at home…Harnessing the power of coal is looking more beautiful every day.”
GE is referencing a new process which supposedly reduces the emissions produced by using coal as an energy source. The process, called Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) is supposed to convert coal into a fuel which burns cleaner and produces fewer harmful emissions. GE’s website claims, “Gasifying coal creates a syngas instead of burning the coal directly to generate energy. Pollution causing emissions are captured efficiently and effectively with minimal cost during gasification rather than treating the emissions after combustion. GE’s IGCC “Cleaner Coal” process emits less than half of the sulfur dioxides, nitrogen oxides, mercury and particulate matter of a traditional pulverized coal plant.”
While the IGCC process may indeed make coal a greener fuel source than it has been in the past, coal remains a fossil fuel. It is a limited resource, tremendously dangerous to extract, and harmful to landscapes. Some critics claim that clean coal is nothing more than a marketing ploy to distract U.S. consumers from the current fuel crisis.
A recent Washington Post article by Jeff Biggers underlines these objections. “Clean coal: Never was there an oxymoron more insidious, or more dangerous to our public health…this slogan has blindsided any meaningful progress toward a sustainable energy policy.” Biggers interviews an aging miner known as Burl, who suffers from respiratory illnesses and old injuries from the mines. “Don’t let anyone ever tell you that coal is clean,” he asserts.
Others applaud the efforts of GE and other clean coal advocates to reduce pollutants like soot, sulphur, and nitrogen. However, while the gasification process might help solve coal-related pollution like acid rain, it does not affect the amount of carbon dioxide produced by coal-burning. Carbon dioxide is the gas most associated with climate change. NASA scientist James Hansen told CBS news, “There is no coal plant that captures the carbon dioxide and that’s the major long-term pollutant.”
It seems that clean coal really is simply a marketing term. Perhaps a more accurate moniker would be “cleaner coal,” which GE carefully uses on its Ecomagination marketing materials. Watch out for billboards, sexy commercials, and touchy-feely green ads for coal. It’s not a long-term, environmentally-friendly solution to our energy problems.
By Haley January Eckels
