Coalescence by Richard Karn

Published on 19 Sep 2005 by Emerging Trends Report. Archived on 1 Nov 2005.

Although the price of coal has doubled in the last year, it will remain the primary fuel utilized for electrical generation in the United States for the foreseeable future. Its abundance, low cost, and widespread availability coupled with advances in filtration and combustion efficiencies, the so-called “clean-coal technologies,” make coal a more attractive method of satisfying America’s electrical needs than other sources of power.

Soaring petroleum and natural gas prices, grass root opposition to nuclear and Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) development, and the perception “Renewables” have not fulfilled their promise cement coal’s continued dominance of the electricity market. Increased demand suggests higher coal prices well into the future, making coal a solid long term investment; however, the Emerging Trends Report has identified three stand-out opportunities likely to be missed by the general public.

For more than a century, coal-fired power plants have seemed to produce power and pollutants in equal measure, leading environmentalists to maintain that the term “clean coal” is an oxymoron. They certainly have a point: China, which today is the largest consumer of coal and derives 80% of its electricity from unregulated coal-fired power plants, has earned the dubious distinction of being home to at least six of the world’s ten dirtiest cities in terms of air pollution. Carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas; sulfur dioxide, the source of acid rain; nitrogen oxide, the cause of smog and precursor to ozone; mercury, fly ash: virtually every damaging pollutant imaginable is emitted from an unregulated coal-fired power plant.

The whole fascinating story is here.