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Clean Coal Technology Key To Region's Future?

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) ―

Click to enlarge 1 of 1: Consol says with sequestration, the country could use the power of coal without the environmental impact.
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Coal produces more than half of the electricity in the United States but it also produces something else.

Coal-fired power plants like the one in Shippingport send carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and many say that's causing global warming.

But some, including presidential candidate John McCain, believe that with coal you can have the best of both worlds – plentiful and clean energy.

At Consol Energy, the region's largest coal company, they're spending millions of dollars every year at their research and development facility trying to develop it.

"We can be in a position in the next 10 to 15 years to be producing near zero emitting coal fired energy," Steve Winberg, from Consol Energy, said.

The process is called sequestration.

In the combustion process, the coal is burned in oxygen rather than in air and instead of being released into the atmosphere the carbon is captured to make a liquid form.

That residue is buried or sequestered as the name suggests.

Consol says with sequestration, the country could use the power of coal without the environmental impact.

But perfecting the process is at best years away and critics say that day may never come.

Activist Lisa-Graves Marcucci says energy companies like Consol want federal money to develop technology that will never do what it promises.

"There is no such thing as clean coal. It's a marketing label they've put on it," she said. "When you burn coal you create an ash. It's a toxic ash and it is a toxin in the environment and it is causing harm to communities and groundwater and surface water."

But Consol says with federal aid and a comprehensive energy policy not only can clean coal happen, it will spur an economic resurgence in our region as an old industry springs back to life with hundreds, perhaps thousands of new jobs.

"These are all high-paying jobs. There's high-paying construction jobs, there's high-paying operating jobs, we need engineers, technicians, chemists, accountants," Winberg said.

Sen. Barack Obama says he also supports clean coal but his energy policy is weighted more heavily towards renewable sources like wind and solar.

All the energy companies KDKA's Andy Sheehan spoke with say we'll need a combination of energy forms to address future needs.

And as we found out, our region is home to all of them.

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