Clean Coal: Reality or Rhetoric? 

Abstract

    Recently, there has been has been a new phrase introduced into the vocabulary of the American public: clean coal. This phrase shifts citizens’ thinking and seems oxymoronic, as coal has previously been synonymous with dirty energy sources and pollution. Any controversy surrounding coal has always been important to the American public, since it generates over half of the country’s electricity. While clean coal technology certainly marks improvements of “cleanliness” in the coal industry, it is not really as clean as the public is being led to believe, and it is not the answer to our current and future energy problems.
    This website explores the truth about both the availability and the disadvantages of clean coal technologies. It also unveils the facts behind the idealistic and biased depictions of clean coal in the media, allowing citizens like you to make it clear to big coal companies and to the government that we will not be blindsided by propaganda for new technologies – coal is still a dirty, non-renewable source of energy, despite how appealing commercials like these might make it seem:

Figure 2: A coal mine in Pittsburgh, 1942.