Reply #31: Well there are distributed coal plants in China and India, and some in the US as well.

[NNadir]

I have never deviated from my insistence that dangerous fossil fuels should be banned, but looking at how to deal with them is instructive.

Suppose your neighbor has a coal plant, a small one. How likely is it that your neighbor can afford a scrubber, a disposal system, etc, etc? Compare this to a large utility with a 1500 MWe coal plant, where the cash flow is hundreds of millions a dollars per year and the situation changes dramatically.

Suppose you required all dangerous fossil fuel devices to contain their carbon dioxide for eternity. Would it be easier to stick a giant balloon on a coal smokestack or on the tailpipes 250 million dangerous fossil fuel powered automobiles? How could you be sure that all 250 million persons owning such devices disposed of them in lawful way? How much would it cost to administer?

In general it is much more difficult to concentrate diffuse wastes and to remove them. Here on the east coast, all of our waterways are contaminated by mercury. How much would be required to remove this mercury? How much energy?

Wastes, such as they exist, are most easily dealt with when they are small, dense and concentrated.