Coal Power Explained

It's a fossil fuel power plant that generates heat in order to turn turbines to make electricity - just like a steam locomotive but instead of driving the train, it drives a generator.

Here are some of the attributes about coal even before it reaches the plant:

• Coal has to be mined (surface or underground)
• Coal has to be shipped (via truck, rail, barge, or ship)

This is dangerous as well as uses resources in its harvest & transportation. The mining of it consists of surface and mountain top removal which changes the topography, fills valleys with debris, and washes wastes into streams. All this before it even generates one watt of electricity.

Once shipped to the plant, it's ready for the the burners - sort of. The coal has to be ground up and mixed with water to create a sort-of pudding. Then, oxygen and the slurry are pumped in a gasifyer, add the 2400 degrees, and voila, you've got some power. The burners power a steam engine - a mechanical piece of equipment with an efficiency rating of about 30%. So 70% is lost automatically just because of the aged technology. Here comes the bad which we all know: Coal is a very dirty fuel. Although in theory one pound of coal produces 10,000 Btu of energy, it also produces by-products such as carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and once reacting with the atmosphere, it produces nitric acid & sulfuric acid which falls as rain.

Coal accounted for 36% of the total U.S. carbon dioxide emissions in 2006 per the Energy Information Administration (EIA). Globally, coal accounted for 26% of the energy production in 2004 and is projected to increase to 28% by 2030.

Currently, the United States holds about 27% of the worlds coal reserves. China is currently on track to be twice as fast in use of coal as the united states with approximately 3% increase per year in coal production. Europe is the only area out of the entire world that has a decrease in coal use with an average -0.7% change per year.

In a nutshell, coal is currently essential for industrialized and emerging market nations. China and India, with their robust emerging markets, are on a fastrack to becoming a coal-use super-power. Because these markets have emerged so quickly, the level of education regarding hazards are negated due to the very fast growth they're experiencing. It's difficult to take a car away from someone who just received it for the first time in their lives. It's difficult to tell someone about health hazards when their livelihood became so good so fast. It's not that anyone wants to take it away, but negative perceptions towards less consumption automatically elicits images of market-death.

The European Union (EU) is the worlds largest economic area as described by the US Department of State They are ones who began the industrial revolution and soon found themselves running not only out of room for expansion, but being as close as they are to one another could not escape the effects of smoke-stacks - or had a direct visual and personal link with them. Because they could not ignore it, it's no surprise that the trend is to reverse the negative effects and put a halt on something that is obviously an archaic form of technology.

Even with terms such as "clean-coal", and "efficient turbines", the efficiency only increases by a small margin (5-10%) and by the nature of the product, emissions are only somewhat reduced, not eliminated. The EU maintains its strong market at an increase of about 2% per year yet they reduce coal consumption .7% and are a key proponent of the Kyoto Protocol reducing emissions overall. The US is fallowing suit with advanced technologies in alternate power systems that meet energy demands yet are far less environmentally invasive. The technology is here, just a matter of public comfort with them.

For more information and related articles, refer to the following:

EIA - Energy Information Administration
FAQ: All about coal--a necessary evil - a CNet news.com article
Wiki - Coal Mining
Wiki - Fossil Fuel Power Plants