King Coal Will Reign For Years Yet

Like Andrew says, James Fallows’ Atlantic article on clean coal – and China’s advances in developing the stuff – deserves to be read in full. But it’s also a useful corrective to the notion that “alternative energy” sources (with the exception of nuclear power) can come at all close to meeting our energy needs either now or in the foreseeable future. For all that relatively few people talk about coal anymore (and of course we no longer mine the stuff ourselves) it’s still the King of Energy:

“Emotionally, we would all like to think that wind, solar, and conservation will solve the problem for us,” David Mohler of Duke Energy told me. “Nothing will change, our comfort and convenience will be the same, and we can avoid that nasty coal. Unfortunately, the math doesn’t work that way.”

The math he has in mind starts with the role that coal now plays around the world, and especially for the two biggest energy consumers, America and China.