Coal is a fossil fuel that is rich in carbons and sulfur. To clan the exhaust is all that can be done to "clean" it up, and at that it is solely lacking true "clean" air.
In all fairness, they do have a process called scrubbers. It uses a lot of water and filtering and is expensive to use. It's also time consuming. Yes, it does work and is on par with Natural Gas. But it's just much cheaper and easier to just use Natural Gas in the first place. Clean Coal Fired Electric plants do exist. But the electricity costs more than Natural Gas to generate and that is passed to the consumer. Right now, the cheapest Electricity is a mixture of Natural Gas and Solar and Wind. During the day, Solar takes most of the load. During Windy Days, Wind helps with the load. At night and calm times, Natural Gas is doing the heavy lifting.
Coal has uses but mostly,, it's going to still be used for manufacturing Petroleum Products.
Here in the northern plains, natural gas, oil and coal are going to be around for the foreseeable future. Almost an unlimited supply. Renewables are impractical, expensive and unreliable up here.
I am a, an all of the above guy. But renewables are decades away from being viable, Especially up here in South Dakota, North Dakota, Wyoming and Montana.
The economy up here is totally dependent on fossil fuels... That is not going to change anytime soon. Fact
Funny you should mention that. I guess there must be a Quantum Fence between Wyoming and Colorado. The places you mention don't have population centers. The closest population center would be one city in SD on the east side. Souix Falls has a population of over 2.3 million. From there next population center falls all the way to Rapid City population of about 50,000. The 3rd population center is Box Elder which is the off base housing for Ellsworth AFB just outside of Rapid City at about 7000. Your needs are completely different than our. We have many large population centers and it's real easy to screw up the air quality in many ways.
In Denver, they got the CO2 problem licked but was left with the Ozone problem from fossil fuels burned. Once again, it's nearing being dangerous to small children. This is caused by Coal, Natural Gas and Automobiles. This is why Colorado is leading the charge for Rocky Mountain States for clean air. We either clean it up or start having all our children wear oxygen masks when they go outside. Denver is in an inversion and whatever is in the air sticks around. Even LA gets a breeze blowing in off the ocean once in awhile. Denver doesn't. On a cold day, it just packs down and compresses.
Even in Grand Junction, the air isn't as clean as it once was. Part of it is the wild fires, yes. But those have always been here. The rest was the Coal Fired Plants and Factories. Those have been shut down. That helped. But it's going right back to foul air once again. The cause? Our roads are jammed packed with cars and trucks. And this is with a total population for the valley of about 150,000.
Partly due to Colorado Regulation, more and more Solar and Wind is being used for electric power generation. And Natural Gas is used instead of Coal. The Power Companies used the same BS arguments you are using. But after the conversions, the consumer electric bills have gone down about 20% and the air is less dirty. Yes, it's been a bit painful. But it's also been proven that the Coal Companies can convert to doing other things utilizing the work force that's already built in. They won't. They would rather get people like you to try and make people cry over them. Meanwhile, they are running out with the workers Retirement Funds like thieves in the night.
