The Reality Blog

The Dirt on “clean”
part 1: Dude, where’s your CO₂?

This is the first in a series of posts taking a closer look at the coal industry’s wildly misleading claims of cleanliness.

We all know coal is dirty. Burning coal is the dirtiest way we produce electricity and is responsible for one third of the CO₂ we release into the atmosphere.

Merriam-Webster’s first definition of “clean” is “free from dirt or pollution.” Coal is anything but, so how does the coal industry justify making the claim that coal is clean? What type of fuzzy math do they use to avoid stepping in a big pile of Reality? Very selective accounting, glaring omissions and above all — a low regard for the truth and our future.

First let’s take a look at their big claim to success: That they are “77% cleaner” since 1970.

What’s the reality?
There’s one huge problem with the 77% figure. The coal industry has decided to conveniently leave out carbon dioxide.

CO₂ is a leading cause of global warming and the climate crisis. What’s more, CO₂ emissions from coal have actually been increasing — about 25% since 1990. Today, coal-fired plants in the US release more than 2.1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide each year.

But somehow, the coal industry doesn’t include CO₂ emissions on their chart labeled “Overall Emissions.” Instead, of the many by-products and pollutants produced by burning coal, their figure only includes five government regulated pollutants — carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and particulate matter.

Each of these are very different, but the coal industry doesn’t disclose how much of each they produce. Rather, to arrive at their 77% number, they lump these very different pollutants together. What’s more, “77%” doesn’t even represent an actual reduction in all of these emissions. Instead, it’s a ratio (”regulated emissions per unit of energy produced”). So, as production has increased over the past twenty years, some of these emissions have even gone up. Of course, they don’t tell you that either.

Poor chemistry, deceptive accounting, and a glaring omission of CO₂ from their emissions data — so far, “clean coal” isn’t looking so “free from dirt or pollution.”

Your next dose of reality… the deadly poisons that the coal industry also isn’t telling you about! Stay tuned for part 2.