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There's still the issue with emissions with methane though. Better than coal though.
by kintamanimatt 13y ago
There's still the issue with emissions with methane though. Better than coal though.
- rfvtgb123 13y agoAnd all the issues with fracking.
- jacques_chester 13y agoCoal's emission profile depends a lot on the coal. Anthracite burns very hot and produces almost pure CO2 (instead of more noxious byproducts), but few deposits are anthracite. For example: here in Australia, the New South Welsh are burning high grade anthracite coal in the Hunter Valley [1]. Meanwhile in Victoria they burn lignite [2]; it's basically ambitious peat moss. The NSW plants produce more CO2 per ton of coal burnt, but their environmental impact is lower -- they produce more KWh per ton of CO emitted. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayswater_Power_Station http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayswater_Power_Station [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazelwood_Power_Station,_Victoria http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazelwood_Power_Station,_Victor...
- jdietrich 13y agoCoal quality is strongly correlated with depth - easily-mined surface coal is invariably of poorer quality than more costly deep-seam coal. The economic viability of coal power generation is largely contingent on the use of the cheapest, most easily extracted coal. Britain has enormous coal reserves, but those reserves are nearly all deep and hard to reach. We import huge quantities of brown coal from Germany and Eastern Europe, because it's around half the cost per unit of energy, even after transport costs. Australia is an edge case, because of the huge reserves of coal relative to a tiny population.