Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Why not? Because, as one commentator put it, the smoke was an “inevitable and innocuous accom-
paniment of the meritorious act of manufacturing.”
4
No coal meant poverty and starvation—something to
consider when we tell poor countries to adopt impractical technologies instead of coal.
In Manchester, the smoking chimneys were considered “the barometer of economic success and social
progress.”
5
That is not to say that living in smoke is the goal. Manchester did not want and would not need
to live in coal smoke forever, and neither will the poor countries now striving for energy, thanks to enorm-
ous advances in coal plant technology.
In 1882 Thomas Edison revolutionized the use of coal, both from the production side and from the pol-
lution side, when he built the first commercial,
centralized
coal-fired electric power plant for New York
residents, starting what is the primary use for coal today: the production of electricity.
The power plant, being centralized, away from most people's homes, provided in-home power
without
burning the coal in the house.
People went from burning coal in their home to getting power, almost by
magic, from electricity that didn't pollute at all. (One negative side effect of centralized power is that we
are not taught to think about what's “behind the plug”; many don't realize that it's “dirty” fossil fuels that
make it possible for them to have clean electricity.)
Power plants also became progressively better at getting more energy from less coal, meaning less pol-
lution (and lower energy costs).
One of the biggest problems coal can cause, particularly when paired with unfavorable weather condi-
tions, is smog. As late as 1952, London experienced a massive air-pollution problem from a temperature
inversion—a phenomenon that prevents particles from dissipating throughout the atmosphere and keeps
them in dangerous, concentrated form. The particularly tragic 1952 inversion increased sulfur dioxide and
soot concentrations all over the city, with a death toll estimated between four thousand and twelve thou-
sand in a matter of weeks.
6
Thankfully, technology has evolved greatly since then. Modern coal technology has many different
means of reducing pollutants. There are filters like ceramics or fabric filtration systems to prevent undesir-
able substances from getting into the air; there are ingenious processes that use certain chemical agents,
such as limestone, to bind pollutants and prevent them from escaping; there are mechanical devices like
wet or dry scrubbers to separate out unwanted constituents; and there are many others.
Over time, these technological advances, as they became economical, became mandated by law. There
is a whole controversial literature about which laws (federal or state) get credit, how much was industry's
profit-motivated pursuit of efficiency, and to what extent the laws
overregulated
pollution at the expense
of access to energy. For our purposes the important thing is this: It's clearly possible to increase fossil fuel
use while decreasing pollution. And what applies to the most challenging fossil fuel, coal, also applies to
oil and natural gas. This is a lesson that China can learn—and as it adopts more sophisticated modern coal
plants, is starting to learn.
MINIMIZING DANGER
So far, we have discussed the challenge we face from the negative by-products that come from producing
and using fossil fuels. But there is another category of risk: the danger of the energy itself going out of
control.
