‘Revolutionary’ coal company could help reduce greenhouse gases

Global Business

Coal is cheap, plentiful, and reliable. It’s also blamed for a host of environmental problems by pumping pollutants in to the atmosphere. An American energy company believes it has come up with a way to burn coal cleanly, while separating and capturing harmful gases.

Imagine how that could clear up the polluted skies in China and India. CCTV’s Sean Callebs took a look at the Southern Company’s coal burning plant under construction in Mississippi to see if it’s too good to be true, where there are 950,000 feet of pipe.

“The first time I came here, this was a cow pasture. What you see behind us was a pine forest,” plant manager Bruce Harrington said.

The Southern Company’s Kemper plant is unlike any other coal burning power plant in the world. Rather than spew so-called greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the Kemper plant transforms coal into a gas.

“Half the world’s coal reserves are low-grade coal. If you are going to have to use coal as a power source, which I think you are going to have to do for now, this technology is the cleanest technology on the planet,” Harrington said.

Officials at the Kemper site called the coal-burning utility plant revolutionary, and said it could be a game changer in terms of reducing carbon emissions blamed on global warming. This site is capable of removing about 65 percent of the carbon emissions from entering the atmosphere. The technology is attracting attention from China, India, and many other nations from around the world.

CCTV America interviewed Robert Barnett, senior energy economist with Bloomberg Government.


Ailun Yang talks about climate change and world’s dependence on coal.

CCTV America was joined by Alvin Lin, China Climate and Energy Policy Director at the Natural Resources Defense Council to talk about on world’s dependence on coal.

Some key statistics of Coal (Source: 2014 Key World Energy Statistics by IEA)

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