The Myth of 'Clean Coal' Might Finally Die
A story in Earther Gizmodo about the future of "clean coal" pulls heavily from Fellow Brian Prest's research and insights.
"'The law itself doesn’t say so much about how they need to actually demonstrate' the required emissions reductions, said Brian Prest, an economist at Resources for the Future. 'Congress basically left it up to the IRS to figure out.'...
And, as Prest pointed out, a lot of those lab-tested techniques don’t seem to be very effective in the field. A separate analysis done by Resources for the Future in 2019 found that power plants using refined coal were only meeting around half of the targeted percentage of emissions reductions required to claim the credit. And, the Resources for the Future analysis found, the incentivized use of this “clean coal” was actually keeping some coal plants open longer than they otherwise world have."
