Most of people think that coal had became part of past and now America had moved on to most advance, safer and cleaner energy sources. While in reality still coal provides electricity almost to half nation, which is more than any other source of power and statistics shows that coal use in America now had nearly tripled since 1960. And this coal use will increase if the power industry succeeds in building the many power plants it has proposed for construction.
According to coal’s proponents coal power is much cheaper. Though the price of electricity made from coal is cheaper but it has other expensive things such as coal related air and water pollution, mining accidents, permanently altered landscapes and most important than all is climate change. And newest proposed coal power plants will cost far more than existing plants, which will be having major impacts on air and water quality and will be having same mining and climate impacts as existing plants.
Technology about reducing carbon emissions due to of burning coal is developing gradually. That technology will play major role in battling against global warming, but that still have to see whether it will work at a commercial scale and at what cost.
While a UCS study in 2009 found that coal use and all the environmental and social costs related with it can be reduced dramatically while saving energy consumers money with policies that aggressively promote energy efficiency and renewable power.
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