People laugh at this, but anthracite genuinely is cleaner than other coal in every regard save CO2 emissions. People just think it's a joke because they've come to believe that CO2 is the only coal emission worth caring about, which definitely isn't true.

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hatthew 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

"Clean coal" is like saying "a fast snail". Sure it can be faster than other snails, but even if it's twice as fast as the second fastest snail, it's still a snail and I'll still laugh when an ant runs circles around it.

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kube-system 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

No, the criticism isn't because people get caught up about CO2 -- it's because "cleaner than other coal" is a very low bar to meet to be calling something "clean" full stop.

Also "clean coal" is not a type of coal being burnt (although that does matter too) but pollution control systems added to coal plants.

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mikkupikku 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Anthracite burns clean enough to use in a pizza oven. If your neighbor told you he was going to install a new furnace and offered you the choice of it burning wood pellets or anthracite, from a smell standpoint you should absolutely choose the anthracite.

Anthracite, in these regards, is very different from bituminous coal.

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hatthew 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

And both are very different from not burning anything.

	▲	mikkupikku 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Undoubtedly. Doesn't change the fact that one kind of coal burns smokeless with a clean blue flame while the other will cover everything for miles in a film of soot and tar.

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kube-system 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>Anthracite burns clean enough to use in a pizza oven.

Yeah, so does wood, which is horribly polluting.

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mikkupikku 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The smell of wood might be nice for flavor, but that's beyond the point of anthracite being clean. That particulate pollution from wood burning is severe compared to the smoke you'll get off anthracite, which is virtually nonexistent.

	▲	kube-system 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Regardless of how good it might be at being the cleanest dirty thing, it's not what the US trope of "clean coal" refers to anyway. Anthracite is not used in the US to generate power because it is too expensive.

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terminalshort an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

The doesn't cause acid rain version is called "clean" and that seems pretty fair to me when the other version causes acid rain.

	▲	kube-system an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It is still dirtier than all of the alternatives we have.
	▲	an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[deleted]

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tadfisher an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

The oxymoronic term "clean coal" refers to carbon-capture-and-storage (CCS) technology [0], touted by the fossil fuel industry as a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and continue employing coal workers.

Thus far, it is incredibly expensive, at a time when solar and wind generation is cost-competitive with fossil-fuel plants which don't employ CCS. It is simply a dead end. You can generate more renewable energy, and store it, for far less than it takes to equip and operate CCS in conjunction with a fossil-fuel-fired plant. Only direct government subsidy makes it viable for a vanishingly small amount of GHG emissions.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage