What do you know about coal and its uses as a fossil fuel, and what type of impact it has on our environment? You may know that we use coal for a variety of different purposes, including the creation of electricity, but at what cost to our planet?

Coal is derived from plants that lived and died millions of years ago. It is the largest contributor to the increasing carbon dioxide percentage in the area. There are a number of toxic by-products involved in the coal refining and combustion process, including uranium, mercury, thorium and arsenic along with other types of heavy metal. Between seven and 30 percent of all coal contains non-combustible materials that must eventually be disposed of.

Lower-emissions coal is something that can be created, but it takes as much as 20 percent additional coal in order to create this cleaner-burning coal. This coal is not simply going to appear, but rather will have to be mined and this is a destructive process from an environmental standpoint. Additionally, the practice of mining coal itself is intensive in terms of carbon emissions, meaning that creating cleaner-burning coal actually contributes to more carbon emissions and environmental destruction rather than less.

Every person living in the United States uses approximately 3.8 tons worth of coal every year. Coal is responsible for providing approximately 23 percent of our global energy needs, and is responsible for generating approximately 39 percent of the electricity used around the globe. Coal is also necessary for global steel production, and approximately 70 percent of steel production depends on the use of coal.

The carbon dioxide emissions that come from the generation of coal-fired electricity in the United States are much greater than all of the emissions from America’s cars and trucks. Most average coal plants require the use of 14,600 railroad cars in order to provide 1.4 million tons worth of coal in a single year. A typical coal-fired, 500-megawatt power plant will draw in approximately 2.2 billion gallons worth of water every year, taking it from rivers, lakes, oceans and other nearby bodies of water.