1 COAL AND SOCIETY A small car zips along the freeway This vehicle is quiet there are no gasoline-fired explosions powering the engine no pistons churning or valves working The car sends out a bit of a hum like a big refrigerator Instead of a smoky exhaust of polluting gases the car emits water vapor The driver checks his indicator he’s got a range of just ten miles 16 km It’s time to refuel If this were an electric car he’d have a long wait ahead as much as three hours at a recharging station But there’s no electricity powering this machine Nor are there heavy batteries weighing it down Instead the energy comes from hydrogen The driver pulls into a station and hooks up the feeder line He refills the tank in three minutes Then he’s off again The Toyota Mirai arrived on the market in California on October 21 2015 To celebrate the car company invited the first 300 owners to a party in Los Angeles The main event was a movie showing of Back to the Future 2 starring Michael J Fox and Christopher Lloyd In the movie the costars use a tricked-out sports car as a time machine and set their destination 30 years ahead to October 21 2015 The message of the party was clear the future is now Vehicles powered by hydrogen which is often produced using coal are part of the future of transportation 5
Hydrogen-powered cars are the cutting edge of green technology designed to avoid the pollution and climate change caused by using fossil fuels The future of personal cars trains planes and public transportation may be closely tied to hydrogen energy And the single most important source for this clean fuel is a black rock with a long and complicated history coal COAL’S LONG HISTORY Coal is a combustible black rock formed from fossilized plant matter That is why coal and similarly formed fuels are called fossil fuels It has a high carbon content and lies in long underground seams or layers Coal is abundant there are huge reserves in Europe North America and East Asia Humans have been using coal as a source of heat for centuries The Hopi people of western North America used coal 800 years ago The ancient Romans used it too 2,000 years ago Where coal lay near the surface it could be easily mined and transported to nearby homes and forges During the Industrial Revolution of the 1700s and 1800s coal fired new technology such as factory steam boilers and locomotives It was also used to fuel heating stoves in the home For a few decades coal was the principal source of energy in the United States At its height in the early 1900s the coal industry included more than 12,000 mines that employed more than 700,000 people 1 Today the mining industry is the most important employer in parts of West Virginia Kentucky Illinois and Wyoming It supports thousands of families as well as local schools and 6
Humans have long known that burning coal produces a high and steady heat 7
