David with ACCCE — Nov 20 2008 09:11 AM

Anchorman Brian Williams began the report by calling clean coal “an oxymoron,” failing to acknowledge the suite of technologies that have been developed over the last 30 years to remove harmful emissions from coal-based power plants.

These technologies have already made coal a cleaner energy resource—overall our plants are 70 percent cleaner today than they were in the 1970s based on regulated emissions per unit of energy produced. And with new advances in technology, we’re looking at a future in which coal will meet America’s growing electricity needs with little to no emissions of the pollutants regulated by federal and state clean air laws.

However, the NBC team redeemed themselves a bit by traveling to Germany to profile the country’s $100 million pilot carbon capture and sequestration plant, which eliminates 95 percent of carbon dioxide from power plant emissions and buries them underground.

NBC also noted the lack of U.S. funding for pilot plants here in America, cutting to a researcher from the MIT Energy Initiative who said, “I believe we have really no time to waste in pursuing a whole set of low-carbon technology options.”

In the end, NBC showed America that carbon capture and sequestration is not only possible, but necessary in order to utilize our most abundant, affordable energy source, and that it’s time to support the funding of the next generation of clean coal technologies.