Advantages and Disadvantages of Coal?

Coal is a fossil fuel, which makes its use hotly debated. So, what are the advantages and disadvantages of coal as an energy resource? Let's take a look.

Fossil fuels have long been the core foundation of modern society. Without oil and coal, our world would look different. In fact, you wouldn't even recognize it. As with many things, however, fossil fuels come with direct and definite benefits, but also direct and definite negatives. This is particularly true with coal.


The advantages of coal are simple to lay out. Coal is plentiful. Coal is cheap. Coal is easy to convert to electricity and you can do it whenever you need to. It also has an incredibly low cost per watt produced. All of this is because coal is a classic fossil fuel. It is easy to find, easy to harvest and requires almost no complex effort to convert to electricity. You just burn it to boil water which turns a turbine that generates electricity. That's it.

The disadvantages of coal, unfortunately, are also clear. First, coal dust is some nasty stuff. Pull up some pictures of coal miners and you'll see what I mean. Digging coal out of the ground is unhealthy for humans and few live long lives. The burning of coal is also problematic as it produces massive amounts of greenhouse gases as well as general pollution that can literally coat the surrounding area in black in some parts of the country.



So, what should we do with coal? Do the advantages outweigh the negatives or is the opposite true? The choice at the moment is clearly to continue to use coal as our main basis for producing electricity. It is simply too cheap and available to ignore. Plus, there is no viable alternative available to us at the moment. Renewable energy technology is advancing rapidly, but we are still decades away from having a renewable energy platform that can replace coal.

Unlike oil, coal is unique in that the advantages and disadvantages associated with its use are so obvious. Alas, that is not the case when discussing a replacement for it.

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