Carbon sequestration may be pointless

Governments, particularly those Governments of nations which have significant coal power stations, have taken refuge in the concept of “clean coal” imagining fondly that someone will invent a technology which can sequestrate carbon dioxide from coal burning power stations.

All coal is dirty

There is no such thing as clean coal, but Gordon Brown does not seem to know that. He talked about clean coal in his recent speech to the Labour Party Conference in Manchester, as though it existed and the conference members cheered and applauded him. It is a bit like the Government’s zero Carbon Homes policy – it is something that just is not possible, with the state of knowledge and technology today.

Clean coal and dirty coal

Coal is dirty to touch and dirty when it is burnt. Can we ever have clean coal? We burn lots of it in order to generate electricity, and so does the United States, China and India as well as many other countries. It is the fossil fuel that emits the most carbon dioxide when it is burnt. It is a matter of some irony that the closing of Britain’s coal mines had the unintended consequence of making Britain pollute less, as electricity generation switched to natural gas.