Coal Primer

[Dr. Scott W. Tinker] Here are the two words you need to know about coal: it's cheap and it's dirty. It's cheap because it's available. Nearly every major country has an available domestic coal reserve. And it's easy. Easy to mine, easy to transport, easy to store, and easy to turn into electricity. Burn coal to boil water, and the steam turns a generator. Available and easy means cheap. Coal electricity is the cheapest in the world, and cheap is a very big benefit, especially where people can't afford anything else. And because electricity goes into every product and service, affordable electricity makes everything else more affordable. That means that the biggest benefit of coal is that it can help lift developing countries out of poverty. But coal has some big downsides, too, and the biggest is that it's dirty. Mining coal can be pretty clean, but in most places, it's dirty and dangerous. And burning it produces pollutants and huge volumes of ash. The best coal plants capture some of this, but most don't, and there are only a few coal plants in the world that capture and sequester some of their CO₂. This means that burning coal produces significant CO₂ emissions. That's what you need to know about coal. It's cheap, making everything else affordable. But it's dirty, causing environmental damage everyday. Knowing that, will the world end up using more of it? That's a big question, and we explore it in the film.