Both of the candidates who competed in this election promised a much greater focus on environmental issues. Among all their other differences, one issue that they both agreed upon is what would seem to be an oxymoron: clean coal. Right now, it’s not so much an oxymoron as it is a fantasy, unproven and far too costly to compete with other technologies. Someday, we may have clean coal, but as it stands now, that seems unlikely.

As it is used today, coal couldn’t be further from clean. It is the most emission-intensive method of energy production, creating 40 percent of the world’s emissions. It also produces almost 50 percent of the energy consumed in the United States every year. Consequently, coal is at the crux of the fight against global warming. Our ability to find a group of technologies that can replace it or virtually eliminate its emissions will likely dictate whether we are able to overcome the challenges that climate change presents us with. Put more simply, coal is the challenge.

In theory, clean coal would be a great idea. Coal is abundant and therefore cheap, and we have a lot of it here in the United States, enough to supply power to the country for an estimated 250 years. If we could use it without the environmental ramifications, we could reduce our dependence on foreign oil and reduce our emissions. If it sounds too good to be true, that’s because it probably is.

The most popular type of clean coal technology at the moment is carbon capture and sequestration, often referred to as CCS. The idea is that carbon dioxide is removed from smokestack emissions before it enters the atmosphere and then pumped underground into underground caverns or empty oil fields.

However, clean coal is currently a lot closer to an idea than an economically feasible technology. Because the process of capturing and sequestering the carbon requires significant amounts of energy, it would reduce or eliminate coal’s main advantage, namely its low price. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has estimated that energy produced by coal plants using CCS would cost one to five cents more per kilowatt hour, potentially twice as much as the five cents that energy from coal currently costs. Another estimate by the California Public Utility Commission was much higher, estimating that CCS coal would cost 16.9 cents per kWh, more than three times the current cost.

So far, attempts to create commercial-scale plants have been unsuccessful. FutureGen Industrial Alliance, a CCS coal plant backed by the Department of Energy and a group of private corporations, was cancelled in January after its projected construction costs rose from $1 billion to $1.8 billion. Clean coal will undoubtedly be much more expensive than dirty coal.

One of the greatest challenges in fighting global warming is that innovation is not a linear, predictable phenomenon. There is no equation that states that X number of dollars spent developing a certain technology will result in X pounds of carbon not emitted.

Significant investment will be required to drive the scientific breakthroughs that will hopefully move us to a sustainable economy, but it is impossible to know which technologies will create these breakthroughs. Only in retrospect can we definitively know what money was well-spent and what was wasted. While it is possible that using CCS coal could eventually be a source of affordable, low-emission energy, that prospect currently seems unlikely.

Regardless of where the search for clean coal leads us, what is more important than any single emissions-reducing technology is the creation of a cap-and-trade carbon market that accurately reflects the true cost of greenhouse gas emissions. President-elect Obama must include this in his package of legislation for his first 100 days. Critics may say that our economy can’t afford it right now, but the truth is that we can’t afford not do it. Other countries are taking the lead on renewable energy, especially those in Europe, where a carbon market is already in place. In the ’90s, America’s ability for innovation drove the tech boom which itself drove higher prosperity across the country. Now, a “clean tech” boom has the potential to return our country to those heights. If we embrace sustainable technologies and lead in their development, the likely widespread adoption of these technologies would enable us to reclaim our position as the driver of the global economy. Clean coal may or may not be a part of that boom, but either way, as Dean Lieberman asserted in “American Innovation Is Key for Our Future” (THE HOYA, Nov. 4, 2008, A3), innovation is what drives our economy, and green innovation is what must drive our economy in the 21st century.

Somerset Perry is a senior in the College. He can be reached at perrythehoya.com. BIODEGRADABLE appears every other Friday.

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