EU just decided that gass and nuclear is to be concidered green. I get why nuclear is alright, but since both coal and gass is basically just carbon in different states. Why then is gass better?
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Gas can be refined, that is you can wash out the sulfur, and most of the heavy metals don’t form gasses (there is no lead gas), and when it burns the light molecules typically don’t end up making soot and since there are really no metals it doesn’t make ash. The result is gas tends to create just CO2 and H2O emissions.
Burning coal is different, you don’t refine the impurities out of the fuel, instead you have to pick it out of the flue gas. That’s a lot harder and doesn’t work as well. Clean coal “fixes” this by making gas from coal, and then burning the gas (which does make it nearly as clean as gas), but you still have all the impurities that you have to dump as ash which is toxic.
Also, burning coal makes more CO2 per energy extracted than gas. It’s just because of the different chemicals you’re burning, but it does mean gas produces a lot less CO2.
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