May 16 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Dan Gearino and Joe Hallett The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio



Most discussions of Ohio's energy future will come to the uncomfortable moment when somebody mentions "clean coal."

For some people, the term is laughable. To others, it is an essential part of what lies ahead.

Is "clean coal" a form of advanced energy? Under Ohio law, the answer is yes. The state has spent tens of millions of dollars on coal research, and companies such as American Electric Power are spending much more.

All these initiatives are in the testing stages. Little evidence is available about whether the costs will be justified, and stark disagreement exists among researchers about the likely outcomes.

"Obviously, coal is really far away from being clean," said Barbara Freese, senior policy analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit advocacy group with headquarters in Cambridge, Mass. She also is the author of Coal: A Human History.

She doesn't even like to say "clean coal," which she describes as "a misleading and not very useful term."

That said, her organization supports research into technologies associated with cleaning coal.

The most-promising technology might be carbon capture and storage, a procedure that involves pumping carbon into underground reservoirs. AEP is testing the procedure at a plant in West Virginia.

Michael Morris, AEP's chairman, president and chief executive officer, has said that carbon-capture technology is an "essential part of a successful strategy to address climate change."

He will get no argument from the Obama administration. "We've got to do it," said Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, about the need to pursue coal research.

Beneath the arguments is the reality of the country's rising demand for electricity, and the limits of how much of that power can come from "green" sources.

If wind turbines were placed virtually everywhere, they would provide only about 20 percent of the electricity needed, said Donald P. McConnell, president of Battelle Energy Technology at Battelle in Columbus. If you lump together all renewable sources, the number rises to about 40 percent, he said.

That means a majority of the nation's power still will need to come from coal, natural gas and other fossil fuels.

"The truth of the matter is, when you look at it, the least-cost way to do this is to work with the capital-retirement processes we have in place," McConnell said. "Instead of abandoning whole plants in place, can we retrofit them so they can continue to operate without having a problem? That's where sequestration issues come in."

He doesn't see this as an either-or proposition. The country will need to invest in cleaner coal-fired plants because the costs would be too high to do otherwise.

Meanwhile, a significant number of the researchers will continue to cringe whenever the word "clean" appears before the word "coal."

dgearino@dispatch.com

jhallett@dispatch.com

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