The coal-fired power generators are the largest greenhouse gas emitters.  The investment climate will be much more difficult under stricter environmental regulations.  The coal industry is concerned that the focus on stringent greenhouse gas laws will severely curtail their industry.  The fear is that the climate change policy would destroy the U.S. coal industry that has been a pillar of energy generation for many years.

     The cap and trade legislation will motivate carbon capture and sequestration for coal-fired power plants.  There is a basic risk that, absent such technology, new construction of traditional coal-fired power plants would not be possible.  One critical problem is that long term predictions about submarine or underground sequestration or storage tightness are difficult and uncertain.  The CO2 could leak from the storage and ultimately appear in the atmosphere.

 For a broad discussion of the politics of global warming, carbon offsets and biodiversity, you may go to http://www.onebiosphere.com

     Clean coal is an umbrella term used in the promotion of the use of coal as an energy source by focusing upon new methods to reduce its environmental impact.  These efforts include chemically washing minerals and impurities from the coal, gasification, treating the flue gases with steam to remove sulfur dioxide and carbon capture technologies to capture the carbon dioxide from the flue gas.  These methods and the technology used are described as clean coal technology.  The coal industry and its supporters use the term clean coal to describe technologies designed to enhance the efficiency and the environmental tolerability of coal extraction, preparation and use, with no specific limits on any emissions, particularly carbon dioxide.

     Some experts have estimated that commercial-scale clean-coal power stations (coal-burning power stations with carbon capture and sequestration) will not be commercially viable and widely adopted before 2020 or 2025.  This time frame is of great concern to environmentalists because there is an urgent need to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.

     A fundamental question is how the federal government will move the U.S. from petroleum and coal use without slowing the economy.  Although Obama has mentioned that the transition to a low carbon economy will create up to 5 million jobs, he has not offered details.

     Low carbon energy will in all likelihood increase manufacturing, transportation, and material costs because of higher energy prices and place U.S. goods and services at a competitive disadvantage compared to economies that lack these emission standards, including China, India, Russia and South American and Middle Eastern countries.  Moreover, it appears unlikely that our government has the capacity to enact expensive climate change policies during this period of severe economic downturn and the need to focus on recovery from the U.S. recession.