Why coal as an "alternative" fuel is a stupid idea

In a recent bill I received a note about an upcoming monthly member meeting at GVEA--after the meeting had already occurred. Then I got a letter saying how GVEA had decided to go ahead and try to "get control of" the Healy Clean Coal Plant. This thing is a millstone, a big weighty expensive block of polluting cement that GVEA is trying to attach to our feet prior to throwing us into the sea of debt and backward thinking. There is no such thing as "clean" coal, and I think we should bag it and go for something truly clean, like wind, or solar. Amazing things are happening every day in clean and renewable power, like this research at MIT:

Inspired by the photosynthesis performed by plants, Nocera and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera's lab, have developed an unprecedented process that will allow the sun's energy to be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Later, the oxygen and hydrogen may be recombined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power your house or your electric car, day or night.

Things like this are what we should be looking at, not some hideously expensive, faulty plant that runs off an extremely carbon-heavy fuel.