Clean Coal Technology is neither clean nor green.

Our View:
The idea that Clean Coal Technology will be able to deliver has long been a favored concept with politicians and few energy majors( oil companies who have developed similar technologies for oil and gas). However Coal and Oil are as different as oranges & apples. The pollution caused by coal right from its largely open cast mining to transportation, open yard storage, its pulverising and finally its combustion is on a much larger scale then oil . Besides its application is much wider. It is the prime fuel for Kitchenfire for the rural home in India & most other poor nations. It is used for firing in hundreds of China's low cost mini cement plants and in most small scale industry across the developing world as a principal fuel. Oil which was gaining some popularity a few years recieved a major setyback last year as it gained notoriety as an unpredictable energy source as prices zoomed and went out of reach for the small consumer.
Being in the energy sector in India we witnessed hundreds of industrialists going back to coal fired furnaces and scrapping the oil fired units which they had barely graduated to after much persuasion over the years.
Now let us see first understand what is clean coal before writing it off.
Clean coal is not generated at the mines as its name suggests. The coal is the same as any other and goes through each of the process described above. Only after it is burned, can its carbon be captured and stored through an extremly expensive process called the Carbon Capture & Storage CCS technology. The toxic emissions primarily CO2 is scrubbed with an assortment of chemical scrubbers and pumped into reservoirs. This isolated C02 is then compressed and pumped down to the geological strata tens of miles below earth for safe keeping in the rock formations within the earths crust. It is then assumed that the Co2 will stay put for hundreds of years within the rocks strata without spreading its toxicity . One small pilot plant in Norway has been functional for 13 years without leakage issues.
It is assumed that baring geographical upheavals the Co2 will not mix with water to form a acidic mixture that spreads toxicity in the earths bowels . It is assumed that if such acids are formed they will be in any case too far below the crust and possibly nuetralised by the minerals which may form inert carbonates to solve the problem. Are these assumptions valid. What if the leakages buried deep down the earth make its way to water sources near habitations or forests where men or beasts or plant life prosper. Also since such projects with extremly complex post scrubbing machinery can be only put up by the most technologically advanced utility companies who any way have low emission norms . So will Clean coal be ever a solution for climate change. No wonder utility companies worldwide sensing the dangers have refused to put up large scale CCS plants or even experiment with it, despite political pressure for clean coal technology.

This is our opinion
We could be wrong. Tell us if we are & why? We encourage diverse opininon
even if it is from commercially interested groups opposed to our thinking.