Environment Japan's clean coal project

While the world's advanced economies have committed to phasing out coal over the next seven years, Japan stands alone in insisting it can make coal less damaging to the planet. Nowhere is that more evident than at the nation's largest coal-fired power plant in Hekinan, a small city in central Japan where 400,000 tons of jet-black piles are spread across a plot the size of 40 soccer fields. Starting next spring, Jera, the company that owns the site, wants to demonstrate that it can blend ammonia — which does not emit carbon dioxide when burned — with coal in its boilers. This new technology prompts a debate over whether it is better to find cleaner ways of using coal or scraping it as soon as possible in favour of renewable energy. The company says the ammonia method can reduce dangerous emissions in the fight against global warming. In an effort initially conceived — and heavily subsidized — by Japan's government, it is one of several power companies planning to use ammonia in a process marketed as "clean coal."

Japan draws nearly a third of its electric power supply from coal, one of the world's dirtiest energy sources. But critics say using ammonia merely extends Japan's reliance on fossil fuels and could potentially increase carbon emissions as the ammonia is produced. Burning ammonia can also produce nitrogen oxide, which is toxic to humans and another emission to manage. [...] "We are trying to decrease the dependence on coal in such countries," said Masashi Watanabe, a natural resources and energy planner in the Trade Ministry. "Ammonia co-firing could be one solution."

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But producing ammonia itself requires electricity, which is typically generated from fossil fuels like coal or natural gas under current methods. In one common process, water is heated to extremely high temperatures — as high as 2,000 degrees Celsius, or 3,632 degrees Fahrenheit — so that hydrogen atoms can be split off and combined with nitrogen. Heating that water requires a lot of power, and the ammonia supplies that will initially flow to Japan will likely be made using so-called grey or brown electricity. So while burning ammonia in a power plant reduces carbon emissions in one place, making ammonia may generate more carbon emissions in another.

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Japan's Energy for a New Era (JERA):

Just like oil, coal is not a renewable energy source (at least not on our timescale). This really seems dubious and, as mentioned, just seems to move where most of the pollution is generated instead of preventing its generation in the first place.