Energy Secretary Backs Clean Coal

Wednesday, April 15, 2009; Page A17

Energy Secretary Steven Chu, above, may not be taking up former vice president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore's call for young people to engage in civil disobedience to stop the construction of coal plants without the ability to store carbon -- but he is making it known that he believes in trying to make coal as clean as it can be.

In an interview yesterday with The Washington Post's Lois Romano, Chu noted that the United States has the most known coal reserves in the world and that more than half of domestic electricity is generated by coal.

"Even if the United States turns its back on coal, China and India will not, and so, given the state of affairs, I would prefer to say let's try to develop technologies that can get a large fraction of the carbon dioxide out of coal," said Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist.