Coal isn't clean or beautiful and it can't fix the AI crisis

Last week, US president Donald Trump issued an executive order aiming to revive “America’s beautiful, clean coal industry” such that it can power the rise in electricity demand from, among other things, artificial intelligence.

- CHRIS WRIGHT

However, this nostalgic push ignores the reality that has been commonly understood since Dickens: nothing about coal is clean.

What it also ignores are the reasons behind the industry’s 20year decline in the US, as well as the incredible uncertainty surrounding what might be the future energy demand of AI and the data centres that give it life.

Coal is a dirty business. From the moment you dig it up, often with the help of some of the world’s biggest explosive rigs, you release methane gas, which warms the planet more than 82 times faster than carbon dioxide over 20 years. Across the Appalachian mountains in West Virginia and Kentucky, the most popular type of coal mining literally involves blowing the tops of mountains off, covering streams in rock and dirt, and filling the nearby valleys with pollutants and heavy metals.

Then, when you burn coal to create electricity, you immediately release carbon dioxide, the main driver of climate change. Burning coal currently releases approximately one-fifth of America’s total carbon dioxide emissions, along with a host of other air pollutants known to cause asthma and respiratory diseases.

Thanks to the Clean Air Act of 1970, originally signed into law by one of Trump’s Republican icons, Richard Nixon, the level of sulphur emissions from coal-fired power plants has been significantly reduced. The level was due to fall even further thanks to measures introduced by Barack Obama. But these have already been on Trump’s chopping block, as were important updates to protect coal miners from dust inhalation.