[SustainableTompkins] MIT again--The Future of Coal – Options for a Carbon Constrained World

[Thomas Shelley]

Dear Colleagues--Here is yet another study from MIT.  They 5 sec. overview is:

"The report states that carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is the 
critical enabling technology to help reduce CO2 emissions significantly 
while also allowing coal to meet the world's pressing energy 
needs."    ...and...
"...in a carbon-constrained world higher efficiency generation, perhaps 
through new materials, novel approaches to gasification, CO2 capture, and 
oxygen separation, and advanced system concepts, perhaps guided by a new 
generation of simulation tools."  ....  blah, blah, blah...

The URL for the report's Web site, wherein the entire report may be 
downloaded, is:
http://web.mit.edu/coal/

I personally have deep doubts that Big Coal, like Big Oil, is going to make 
significant investments in  "novel approaches" such that any timely 
difference (80 per cent reduction by 2050, or whatever) is going to be made 
in the CO2 emissions impact of burning coal.  In the long run, the 
elimination of coal as a fuel source should be somewhat like eliminating 
the backyard burn barrel....   Besides, very useful chemicals come from 
coal that otherwise are difficult to obtain.  I'd rather that future 
generations have lots of coal around for useful chemicals than have it all 
burned up in no time flat.  My $.02 only.  Tom

Tom Shelley
118 E. Court St.
Ithaca, NY 14850
607 342-0864
tjs1 at cornell.edu
http://www.myspace.com/99319958