Clean Coal Technology: Just the Facts Leah Arnold Polk, American Coalition for Clean Coal Energy
american coal council
www.factuality.org
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eliable, affordable electricity is the lifeblood of modern America, but many people still don’t know that coal fuels nearly half of our electric power. Thanks to several slick advertising campaigns, fewer still know the real truth about coal – that clean coal technology isn’t a myth or a pipe dream, but a reality on display in cities and states across the country. Sgt. Friday wanted “just the facts” on Dragnet, and that’s what the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity aims to uncover with the Factuality Tour, a multi-stop, cross-country road trip documenting the true story of coal in America. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, ACCCE set out with a video crew and one goal in mind: to expel the myth that clean coal technology doesn’t exist. To really tell the story of coal in America, you must first consider the source. In our case, Arch Coal’s Black Thunder Mine in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin. Black Thunder is one of the largest coal mines in the world; it alone provides about 8 percent of America’s coal. Black Thunder boasts more than 6,000 acres of reclaimed land, an extraordinary environmental feat. Next, the tour literally follows the coal train to Omaha, Neb., the site of Union Pacific’s Harriman Rail Dispatching Center. America’s vast railways transport more coal than any other product and the employees at the high-tech center route these trains efficiently to their end destination, a power plant. Thanks to advances in technology, coalbased power plants operate with 77 percent fewer emissions than they did 30 years ago. The Factuality Tour visits a number of power plants that currently blow that average out of the water. At MidAmerican Energy’s Walter Scott Energy Center in Council Bluffs, Iowa., the tour showcases current technologies in action and how they succeed in massive reductions of regulated pollutants. In Wisconsin,
This on-site settling pond, photographed on a Factuality Tour of MidAmerican Energy’s Walter Scott Energy Center, provides successful nesting sites for two endangered bird species: the piping plover and the least tern.
the WE Energies Pleasant Prairie Plant takes those technologies one step further with a carbon capture pilot program on a 30-year-old plant. The ability to retrofit existing plants with carbon capture will be one of the most important keys to unlocking America’s clean energy future and the WE Energies pilot is one of only a handful currently capturing a portion of its carbon output. The Factuality Tour also highlights groundbreaking projects still under development, but with near-term impacts on the path toward near-zero emissions. In Indiana, Duke Energy gives a tour of its Edwardsport plant construction site, which soon will be the world’s largest IGCC plant and one of the cleanest in the country. From Tenaska’s headquarters in Omaha, the tour catches up on two plants that will both capture carbon once built. The Trailblazer plant in West Texas will be the first commercial scale coal-based
power plant to capture nearly 90 percent of its carbon dioxide for use in enhanced oil recovery, and the Taylorville project will capture 50 percent of its carbon dioxide and offer the ability for geologic storage. The Factuality Tour concludes in Mattoon, Ill., the home of FutureGen. FutureGen symbolizes the future of clean coal technology and emphasizes the importance of private industry and the government working together to satisfy our energy needs with sustained environmental progress. Each of these groundbreaking projects involves different technologies to reduce carbon outputs and underscores the importance of investing in and developing a suite of carbon control technologies. After all, there is no such thing as a silver bullet when it comes to climate change. Technology aside, the Factuality Tour brings to life the extraordinary people that make these projects possible and provides a firsthand account of the important role coal 37