Thanks Peter, my concerns exactly. I think we have about a 10-20 year gap where environmentalists are going to shut down coal before anything else is available to take up the slack. Add rolling blackout/brownouts to residential price increases ranging between 15% and 100%, or more, and you have a volitile situation with the general public. It's going to be interesting.

Granted, there is no such thing as truly clean coal, just as there is no way to burn hydrocarbons in combination with oxygen bearing atmosphere without an environmental impact. In-situ recovery of coal and shale oil hydrocarbons is the best case scenario for tapping into the vast mineral resources in North America, giving us energy independence, and minimizing environmental impact until more advanced energy generation, transmission, and storage technologies develop.

What "STOP CLEAN COAL" really means is:

-Stop building high efficiency clean coal power plants that , without any specific CO2 capturing, can potentially save 1.4 Billion tons CO2 per year by replacing older less efficient power plants with modern high efficiency clean coal power plants.

-Even in the best case scenario, where wind and solar can replace 10% of the base load generation (wind and solar is 0.35% of today's total energy consumption), the saving would be 0.411 Billion tons CO2 per year if modernization is not allowed of the old coal plants. I.e. by fighting development of new clean coal plants environmentalists block the additional potential of about 1 Billion tons CO2 per year saving.

-Necessary investment in back up sources for wind and solar generation that are dependable and can be available when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining.

-Higher energy rates due to additional transmission fees, higher cost energy generation, and cost of redundancy to mitigate unpredictability in the availability of wind and solar power generation.

-Stop building financially sound modern clean coal power plants that can produce electricity at today's competitive energy rates.

-Focus all the efforts to grow the 0.35% wind and solar generation to 10% while the big potential to make both environmentally and financially significant difference is in the 50% of old coal generated energy production by replacing them with modern high efficiency clean coal plants.

-Stop building modern power plants that can efficiently use domestic fuel sources such as waste coal, product coal, biomass, tar sand etc. etc.

-Stop securing a reliable base load generation by focusing on unreliable sources of generation.

-Start investing in wind farms that, for replacement of one regular size clean coal power plant, needs 300 – 500 wind turbines spread out over 70,000 – 100,000 acres of land each requiring access roads and power lines.

-Start transporting power over long distances with higher transmission losses resulting in overall lower efficiency.

I assume everybody agrees that we need energy and can not shut it off so the most beneficial approach is a dialog to come up with an "ALL OF THE ABOVE" solution using all the available technologies within an acceptable COE.
There is plenty of need, space for improvement, and market share for everybody who has a viable technology!