Back to the Coal Power?
Steam Carriage
There was once a time when we were all pretty dependent on the coal. It was the main driving force behind moving people from one place to another. Think steam railways and the magick horseless diligence.
To the sheer terror of many environmentally aware people, the coal transport can be on its rise once again. This time in a form of an electric car… but the form doesn’t change the essence.
According to Energy Information Administration more than 77% of electricity generated in the USA is environmentally unfriendly. The leader with 50% is coal. So, what do we get by burning coal? Plenty of CO2 and a hoard of other nasties. To generate one kWh of electricity, we need to burn 0.36 kg of coal, My biggest concern is the particle pollution, though. It is hard to measure but the doctors see a constant rise in asthma and other pulmonary disease patients. Coal related lung diseases take 24,000 lives a year in USA alone, including almost a 1,000 miners every year.
Coal pollution facts
Coal emits:
sulphur dioxide (SO2)
nitrogen oxides (NOx)
carbon dioxide (CO2)
mercury
nanoparticles (dust, basically)
- A midsize coal power plant (100 megawatt output) will emit more than 11 kg of mercury each year. Plenty of nasty stuff. According to the National Wildlife Federation, it takes just 1 gram of mercury to contaminate a small lake. It doesn’t necessary contaminates it… sometimes mercury just travels hundreds of miles and contaminates the soil.
- According to Washington Post USA burns more than a billion tons of coal per year.
- 40% of USA’s CO2 “contribution” comes from coal-fired power plants.
- Natural gas and oil is much less carbon intensive, so stop accusing us, motorists. Better shut all the coal plants!
- Despite these coal pollution facts many governments around the globe continue subsidising coal mining. No wonder – the Prairie State Energy Campus – the mammoth coal plant being built in Illinois, will have injected $3 billion in state economy, creating around 2000 jobs. It promises to be the cleanest in USA…
The conclusion is that we need to increase the output of clean energy sources significantly to make all this electric car hype work. Don’t you think that coal should be abolished? Please add your comments.
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