I think the obvious point here is that coal will be used and at an incredible scale. With 850 coal-fired plants planned/projected/building in the USA/India/China alone, it has to have our attention.

Any methods that lessen the impact on GHG has to be supported, with the planet weighted down by so many humans wanting to live like those in California. What will be adopted into new equipment to keep coal-fired plants relatively clean will be vital over the next ten years.

We have a lot of coal in North America. Not so much in Europe, China, or Japan.

Jack,

Can you (or anyone else) point me to a source for understanding current and projected numbers of coal utilities?

Thanks.

Chay,

Yes I can. Christian Science Monitor ran the article and it can be seen at:

http://www.rense.com/general61/jyoto.htm

Actually, China has the third largest coal reserve base in the world, following US and Russia (India is fourth).
EIA coal link

Top 3 energy demand nations in world are in the top 4 of coal reserves? Ominous...

Increasingly, I see the battle of the next few decades being between peak oil and climate change and the tradeoffs therein.

thelastsasquatch,

Your point about trade offs is right on.

The scary thing too is that the USA is talking about 120 new power plants and we have two, a whole two, that are synfuel, under construction (there may be one completed . . . ?) and apparently they are small plants at that.

We have a local Supervisor race underway, and Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant is in my backyard. One of the candidates wants to stop nuke power and talks about building thousands of PV systems on homes in our county. Wonderful idea, but the solar industry right now is having supply problems. And a whole six silicon plants for PVs under construction around the world as of last fall. Anyone have better figures on this?

That is what is striking to me. Good ideas not being executed at any required scale to make an immediate difference.

Six solar power plants producing 6,000,000 kilowatts of power per year when it is used in panels, but 600,000,000 kilowatts if used in line focus, and 6,000,000,000 kilowatts if used in point focus.