Can coal ever be a safe source of energy?

Question

Alberta supplies the United States with more than 10% of its oil supply.Making it the largest single supplier to the US,more than Saudi Arabia.

Alberta has at least 10 times as much coal as it has oil,which means the US will be their obvious market.The government of Alberta has set aside 2 billion dollars to study carbon sequestration.Is this enough tax payers money to make coal clean and safe.

Answer 1

I wouldn't say never, but certainly not in the near future. There are just so many problems associted with burning coal.



Obviously there's the CO2 release, and carbon capture and sequestration is nowhere near ready for prime time yet. There are serious concerns about finding a suitably stable location to store all of that carbon indefinitely. If you get an accidental release of a large store of carbon, every person within the release zone is dead.



Then there's the coal sludge storage, which can lead to disasters like this if something goes wrong:

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2008/12/30/203525/tennessee-clean-coal-ash-sludge-spill/



Then there's the mercury emissions which are impacting our fisheries. And the particulates which we need to address with scrubbers. And the mountaintop removal which just decimates entire regions, including potentially impacting their water supply.

http://ecopolitology.org/2010/01/07/leading-scientists-urge-ban-on-mountaintop-removal-mining/



From an environmental and public health perspective, burning coal is a disaster. The only safe coal is coal left in the ground.

Answer 2

The question is rather vague. What you seem to be after is whether coal could become a low-carbon footprint energy source with the help of (not yet developed technologies for) sequestration. If you surf the net on this, I think you'll find -as I did a few years back- that there is a quite a lot of research going on re sequestration (and obviously tremendous incentives to try to come up with something). Relative to all the effort, the results so far are minimal. This doesn't mean there is no hope. $2 bil. is obviously not peanuts, either. But, I think there are probably more promising possibilities in energy efficiency and conservation, and possibly other technologies. Wind and solar, for instance, need a lot of relatively empty land (which Canada has). Canada's coal reserves are relatively modest in comparison. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal#World_coal_reserves

Without knowing the particulars I cannot be sure, but would tend to doubt that the $2 bil. is a wise use of taxpayer's monies for Alberta. Quill is a prime example of a frequent -though not universal- inverse relation of Yahoo Answers level and intelligence.

Answer 3

Canada produces about 75 million tonnes of coal annually. By comparison, Canada produces 25 million tonnes of wheat, 15 million tonnes of canola, and 12 million tonnes of barley. Typical yields are 2 -3 tonnes per acre. The energy content of the cereal crops is in the range of 15 to 19 MJ/kg. For comparison, the lignite yields 10-20 MJ/kg. Canada's agricultural sector currently produces close to the same volume and energy as the coal mining sector. There are alternate biomass crops that produce 4-8X as much per acre and can be grown on currently unproductive land. Coal could be replaced by about 20% of Canada's agricultural capacity. The agricultural option is sustainable and carbon neutral. The cost per unit of energy would be about the same as coal without the negative environmental impact. If the environmental cost of coal was included in the price via a carbon tax, the agricultural option would have a decisive advantage. The cost of converting to an agricultural biomass based system is a fraction of the $2 billion allotted to trying to clean up coal and would benefit a broader constituency (more voters). Why is the Alberta government spending $2 billion of taxpayers money to promote the economic interests of a handful of mining companies to perpetuate a redundant and unnecessary mode of energy production ahead of the interests of thousands of Alberta farmers and First Nations?



I am making this case later today with senior government officials in Manitoba, and next week at the cabinet level. I spent last week talking with Saskatchewan. I am making arrangements for demonstration projects in both provinces for the 2012 crop year. I invite farm groups and First Nations that have an interest in furthering the biomass initiative to contact me via the YA email. I will respond in the open to legitimate contacts.

Answer 4

Thanks for feeding conspiracy theories about Alberta's proposed transmission lines. Since the early 1980's until now, Alberta's transmission network has not been upgraded to a major extent, while the use of electricity has almost doubled.

http://poweringalberta.com/2011/06/17/aeso-draft-2011-long-term-transmission-plan-brochure/



Besides having low reliability, an outdated transmission network results in high line loses due to resistance. These line loses mean more greenhouse gas emissions.

Answer 5

The US is the Saudi of Coal. We certainly wouldn't need to buy any from Canada but the markets are somewhat global, but more for oil than coal. Alberta has vast deposits of oil sands.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_sands

These deposits resemble coal and require more refining than regular oil wells and I am sure that is why they are willing to pay the 2 billion in carbon sequestration technology. They would do it for public relations if nothing else.



Coal is safe enough for me. There are dangers in everything. You can't make the world perfectly safe. It wouldn't be a world I would want to live in. I do favor that they require good pollution technology but more for soot and sulfur and less so for CO2. Carbon sequestration isn't high on my priority list.

Answer 6

"2 billion dollars to study carbon sequestration"



And you thought the EcoNazi's in the US were lunatics.



Can coal be safe? Safe compared to what? Freezing to death? Starving. We used to burn Cow dung in indoor fireplaces. Do ya think that was healthy?



Scrubbing the sulfur out of coal emissions is a fine practice - no one likes acid rain.



But carbon sequestrating is Marxist idiocy run amok. As Herman Cain recently said 'Stupid People are ruining America" or in this case Canada.



You see sulfur is incidental to the process of getting energy from coal. CO2 is NOT. Sequestering the Carbon simply means you are throwing away MOST of the energy.



And WHY are we sequestering carbon? For that giant crock of Socialist ******** called Global Warming. Global Warming is a TAX SCAM, of the Government, by the Government & for the Government.



Is 2 billion dollars to study carbon sequestration enough tax payers money to make coal clean and safe?



No. It's a STUDY. Even IF coal were dangerous - a STUDY wouldn't change that. It's paying a bunch of tax funded academic pinheads, to tell you that MORE study needs to be done. They will spend the 2 billion then tell us "Sequestration is VERY tricky".



You know WHY it's tricky. Because CO2 is NOT a by product. It's not incidental. It's not a pollutant. It's the MAIN process. CO2 is HOW Life stores & releases energy.



You're paying college professors Billions to tell you what a 2nd year Student could tell you off the top of their head. The only way you can sequester carbon is by not burning it, & that throws away most of the energy.



And would you like to know the final joke here? If we actually spent the Trillions to do carbon sequestration, wasting Trillions in unutilized energy - the Dihydrogen Monoxide released from the unsequestered Hydrogen is an even MORE potent greenhouse gas than CO2.



So maybe we should ban that too.



dihydrogen monoxide petition

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi3erdgVVTw

Answer 7

I think that gassification of coal is probably the safest way to use it as an energy source, because of the mercury contamination.



"

U.S. government scientists tested fish in 291 streams around the country for mercury contamination. They found mercury in every fish tested, according to the study by the U.S. Department of the Interior. They found mercury even in fish of isolated rural waterways. Twenty five percent of the fish tested had mercury levels above the safety levels determined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for people who eat the fish regularly. The largest source of mercury contamination in the United States is coal-fueled power plant emissions"

Answer 8

carbon sequestration is a joke. modern coal technology is "safe". scrubbers and electrostatic precipitators do a well enough job. carbon is not a concern for me, its the sulfur levels that are harmful. SO2 is what causes noticeable things like acid rain and dirty air.

Answer 9

It already is when used in modern smoke stake scrubbing systems.

Answer 10

no. because renewable energy is the best one.

Answer 11

it is

safe if used properly



that is why it is used now