Without question natural gas, after you take out the impurities (which pipelines do in a gathering field to prevent corrosion, not poisoning themselves, etc.) burns cleanly, assuming CO2 (breathed by green plants!) and pure water are not pollutants. I would love to convert my Bethlehem Dynatherm to gas and not be facing BIG fuel oil bills in the next few months.
However, with all the expenditures by electric companies to install scrubbers on their coal-fired plants over the past decade, plus the use of low-sulfur coal from western states, I wonder if much of the air quality problems have not already been solved, and that marginal benefits of, say, 50 ppm in mercury, some of which will settle to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, is worth bothering about. Yes, dealing with the ash is another problem, even if we dump it all off Malibu beach.
Thanks for the link, WC.
Without question natural gas, after you take out the impurities (which pipelines do in a gathering field to prevent corrosion, not poisoning themselves, etc.) burns cleanly, assuming CO2 (breathed by green plants!) and pure water are not pollutants. I would love to convert my Bethlehem Dynatherm to gas and not be facing BIG fuel oil bills in the next few months.
However, with all the expenditures by electric companies to install scrubbers on their coal-fired plants over the past decade, plus the use of low-sulfur coal from western states, I wonder if much of the air quality problems have not already been solved, and that marginal benefits of, say, 50 ppm in mercury, some of which will settle to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, is worth bothering about. Yes, dealing with the ash is another problem, even if we dump it all off Malibu beach.