Sims Gallagher says clean coal not only solution in China
Other sources of energy, like renewable and nuclear power and natural gas, will be necessary for China all the same if the country hopes to control its carbon dioxide emissions. Clean coal "needs inevitably to be part of the solution in China, but it’s not the only solution. Far from it." said Gallagher, who just published a book on energy technology in China. Different kinds of power can serve different purposes, and it's impossible to predict which technologies will develop most successfully.
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In the United States, the case for clean coal is even weaker. According to a recent estimate from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, a new clean-coal plant built now costs about as much as a new solar plant per unit of electrical generation -- and that estimate looks optimistic next to the even higher costs Mann reports in Wired. U.S. coal power plants are much older than the new Chinese fleet, and it wouldn't make sense install fancy new cleaning equipment at facilities that will need to be decommissioned soon anyway. Perhaps scientific progress or shifting geopolitical constraints will make coal relatively cheap again in the United States. "I wouldn't put it past the market to revert to coal," Gallagher said.