For Coal, Build Well Or Not At All

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) has introduce a bill that would ban new coal-fired power plants unless they are built to capture carbon emissions. The technology Kerry wants to make standard has only been tested but not employed commercially. It would affect some 150 coal plants on the drawing board in the United States. The future of coal, cheap and abundant domestically but inherently dirty, is a hot-button issue. The cry for energy independence makes it appealing, but the common plant technology is responsible for about one third of America''s world-leading emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.