| Post

Clean Coal: More of a Money Pit than an Energy Source

“Piles of Dirty Secrets behind a Model ‘Clean Coal’ Project”  |  by Ian Urbina, New York Times

This is a great exposé by the New York Times on how a clean coal project in Mississippi has cost investors, rate payers, and taxpayers $6.4 billion. And it is still not even close to being operational. Remember the uproar by Republicans over Solyndra, a solar panel manufacturing company the in Silicon Valley that collapsed, leaving taxpayers liable for $535 million in federal loan guarantees? Well, this plant makes that look like a drop in the bucket and we still appear to be no closer to an example of carbon capture and sequestration working for coal. Maybe it is time to move on. Clean Coal does not make economic sense, and we have lots of other alternatives: $6 billion sure would buy a lot of solar panels.