Clean coal. An oxymoron if you’ve ever heard one, right? And yet it’s a phrase uttered by our president seemingly not tongue-in-cheek. President Trump issued an executive order April 9 to boost production and energy generation using coal, with aims to reopen shuttered coal plants and delay or prevent the closing of others.
There’s just one problem: clean coal doesn’t exist. The phrase refers to using carbon capture and storage mechanisms at the point of generation, capturing the pollutants spewed by coal plants and, in most cases, burying them deep underground. It’s an approach fraught with complications, not least the fact that carbon and other pollutants rarely stay where they’re placed, leaking out into our atmosphere and fouling our air and climate. It’s also expensive to retrofit old plants; who will pay for that? Certainly not utilities with a focus on their bottom line.
Opinion: Milwaukee losing another federal lifeline. Impact will be swift and devastating.
The clean coal approach also completely ignores other toxic byproducts of using coal; we may be able to capture the CO2, but not the mercury or nitrogen dioxide, themselves dangerous pollutants for human and environmental health. And what about the byproduct of burning coal, coal ash — where will that go? Most likely to storage areas that will inevitably leak and contaminate groundwater supplies too.
Tell the Trump administration we have abundant options for clean energy now. Don’t let their regressive policies take us back to the 1800’s.
Nathan Dombeck, Janesville
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Trump executive order means more deadly coal pollution | Letters