Sunny Ahn's WebLog

Great article in today’s Boston Globe about the potential of capturing natural gas, methane, directly from coal.  In the US only, coal provides the majority of our electricity, approximately 51%.  It unfortunately is also the dirtest energy source as well, as it is a main source of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and NOx in our atmophere.  According to Harvard, if we follow the current ‘business as usual’ path with our energy consumption, the US only will need to build 1000 new power plants by 2020.  The attractive aspects of coal are 1) we have a lot of it, more than 250 years worth and 2) that it is cheap – cheap to find and produce as compared with others sources – the problem is that much of that ‘cost evaluation’ is short sighted as it does not incorporate the costs to the environment. 

So I’m so encouraged to hear about companies like GreatPoint that essentially extract methane or natural gas from coal.  It uses a catalyst that reacts with coal and steam inside a reactor vessel to produce natural gas.  The jury is still out whether they can do it on a large commercial scale, but these improvements, along with further investments in coal gasification and carbon dioxide sequestration, offer the first steps in reducing our carbon dioxide emissions.  The problem still is that “coal to natural gas” technologies still emits emissions.  The ultimate goal, however, to is switch to alternatives such solar, wind and geothermal – those that actually emit little to zero emissions. 

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