Why are coal fired power stations bad?
There is really only one down side to coal as a source of energy: it’s dirty when it burns and contributes up to 40% of the CO2 and much of the SO2 found in today’s atmosphere. Despite the ads put out by the coal industry, there are no such things as clean economic coal burning power plants. Other than that, coal offers one of the cheapest, most plentiful sources of energy there is. And distributing the coal from the mines to the power plants, done by coal cars on trains, is relatively inexpensive as well. And the BTU per mass of coal is quite high; so we get more energy per input than other forms of energy source. So, if you are willing to sacrifice the future of our planet and mankind by burning coal, there’s nothing wrong with coal.
