Thread: Republican platform declares coal is clean

Republican platform declares coal is clean

By Rebecca Leber on Jul 11, 2016

The Republican platform committee met in Cleveland the week before the Republican National Convention to hammer out the party’s policies in a Trump era. Not to be outdone by Democrats, who approved the party’s strongest platform language yet on climate change this weekend, Republicans have gone as far as possible in the other direction — by endorsing coal as clean.

After a unanimous vote on Monday, the RNC’s draft platform officially declares coal “an abundant, clean, affordable, reliable domestic energy resource.”

David Barton, a delegate from Texas, proposed the single-word edit to the RNC’s already-glowing list of adjectives on coal in its platform draft. “I would insert the adjective ‘clean’ along with coal, particularly because the technology we have now,” was Barton’s reasoning. (You can watch a clip of the vote on C-SPAN).

For years the coal industry — and at one point, even President Obama — promoted the idea of “clean coal,” that expensive and imperfect carbon-capture-and-storage technology could someday make coal less terrible. But there’s no way it is clean.

The RNC language just happens to reflect the same talking points favored by the lobby group, American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), which on its website calls coal “an affordable, abundant and increasingly clean domestic energy resource that is vital to providing reliable low-cost electricity.”

The RNC copied most of that language correctly, give or take a few words.

http://grist.org/election-2016/repub...coal-is-clean/

82,000 Tons of coal ash spill into North Carolina river

Some coal is cleaner than others, but clean coal requires a scrubbing process to make it clean. Very possible, very doable, but to call coal "clean" by its nature, that would not be accurate. I support coal with the scrubbing process but it requires regulation and management by the utility companies and industries that use it.

Coal generates 44% of our electricity, and is the single biggest air polluter in the U.S.


Air pollution: Burning coal causes smog, soot, acid rain, global warming, and toxic air emissions.
Learn more.



Wastes generated: Ash, sludge, toxic chemicals, and waste heat create more environmental problems.
Learn more.



Fuel supply: Mining, transporting, and storing coal levels mountains and pollutes the land, water, and air.
Learn more.



Water use: Coal plants need billions of gallons of cooling water and harm wildlife.
Learn more.


A typical (500 megawatt) coal plant burns 1.4 million tons of coal each year. As of 2012, there are 572 operational coal plants in the U.S. with an average capacity of 547 megawatts.

Coal pollutes when it is mined, transported to the power plant, stored, and burned.

Click on the pictures above left to see more about the kinds of environmental damage caused by coal.

http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/c...l#.V4UyFfkrLIU

Power plant photo credit: Warren Gretz, DOE/NREL

Learn More about Our Coal Use

• How Coal Works
• Smart Energy Solutions: Decrease Coal Use

In-Depth Analysis and Reports

• Ranking the States that Import the Most Coal (2014)
• An Economic Analysis of the U.S. Coal Fleet (2013)
• Ripe for Retirement: The Case for Closing America's Costliest Coal Plants (2012)
• A Risky Proposition: The Financial Hazards of New Investments in Coal Plants (2011)
• Burning Coal, Burning Cash: Ranking the States that Import the Most Coal (2010)
• Coal Power in a Warming World: Investing in Carbon Capture and Storage (2008)

Koch brothers and big utilities campaign to unplug solar power


Koch brothers face an unexpected new foe: tea party conservatives

The dirty energy industries do no want regulations. Pa legislature just turned down sensible and much needed regs that the voters wanted. There is no excuse for allowing greedy, reckless corporations and stock holders $$$$ whilst sickening & killing people, children included.

Only 5% of our energy is renewable even though there would be PLENTY of JOBS & no illnesses.

NO excuse for that either.

GOP will have a hard time winning as the environmentalists will not vote for a platform run on expanding dirty energy. It is the 21st century and they want to progress into modern technologies - at least subsidize expand clean ones. Dirty energy makers receive taxpayer subsidies, pay no taxes and are some of the highest profit makers of any industry. They do not care at all @ people & that is WRONG.

Pipelines break, fire bomb trains ignite, fracking cement casings will all fail eventually & the cancer causing chems will infiltrate our aquifers. Try & sue these industries, they drag it on for decades. Exxon Valdez spill still has oil @ Alaska and fought a legal battle for 20yrs so as NOT TO PAY or AS LITTLE AS THEY CAN,

The Gulf states have 1200 fracking wells in the water (used to like the fish from that area till the blow out of oil for a month) Now you can add all the toxic wastewater from fracking wells to the mix. That is 80,000 lbs of cancer causing chemicals PER WELL.

California is using fracking's toxic wastewater for crops, have a little cancer causing XYLENE with your salad. They also dump it in the ocean at offshore wells. Now they want to well up the east coast. This is wrong! These industries need regulations and need to be kept to a minimum production - move over or join the clean energy movement - don't keep us back for your greed. If the "race for the cure" advocates started with some of the causes and tackled them, there wouldn't be a need for those races.

No man may poison the people for his private profit.
—Theodore Roosevelt

"The supreme reality of our time is the vulnerability of our planet."
President John F. Kennedy

“When a man must be afraid to drink freely from his country's river and streams that country is no longer fit to live in. ”― Edward Abbey

Coal may be abundant, affordable, and reliable, but it is anything but clean. This is probably just pandering to the coal industry. On most issues I lean right to far right, but on the environment I'm on the left and I'll make no excuses or apologies for that.

Organic sulfur can't be removed from coal through the scrubbing process. Actually removing "organic sulfur" through a necessary chemical process is expensive and is not considered cost effective. Scrubbing does help, but it's to a total solution.