All experts agree that meeting our energy needs is not just vested in one single source, but a combination including wind, solar, nuclear, and biomass retrieval. However, coal gasification plants can provide both an alternative source of energy and an environmental plus. The U.S. has vast reserves of coal, and this process can convert coal into electricity and hydrogen, plus retrieve energy from biomass and municipal industrial waste.
Coal gasification turns coal into a synthetic gas minus the pollutants of sulfur and mercury that can fuel turbines producing electricity. Rather than crippling this valuable resource, Obama and other elected officials should create tax incentives to retool current coal plants into coal gasification plants, thus ensuring jobs and a valuable source of energy with bi-products that can be used in the development of hydrogen cars and other fuel cell hybrids from a product that has emission levels comparable to those of natural gas.
But As For Me…
All alternative energy sources have drawbacks to them, ethanol derived from corn creates an inflationary impact of corn as a food source for the nation and the world. Solar and wind energy is dependent on weather conditions and production varies among regions of the nation. There is no one answer to meeting our nation’s requirement for available, inexpensive energy–all must be placed on the table with equal consideration. For the Obama-Biden ticket to dismiss out-of-hand a major component of this formula to meet our energy needs now and in the future seems shortsighted and foolhardy.
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I couldn’t agree with you more. To think that we will be able to meet the world’s growing energy demands without the use of coal and other carbonaceous fuels is ridiculous. And the answer to using carbon fuels in an environmentally responsible way is gasification.
Here is a company that is claiming they can build Zero Emission Energy Plants base on compact gasification technology.
http://zeep.com