The scrubbers and other cleaners are really for soot, sulfur and other pollutants. As much as we like to talk about the ability to capture CO2 leaving the smoke stack of our coal plants, that technology is really not in place for the vast majority of our electrical generation. Therefore, the scrubbers really affect the conversation in that they use energy that can’t then be delivered to the consumer. This is just one in many factors that bleed off the efficiency of the system.

Unfortunately both systems are fairly efficient. A great deal of the energy of petroleum is wasted rather than move the car down the road. Likewise, a great deal of energy is wasted from the time it is created in the plant to the time it reaches your light switch.

At some future time, I would like to write a piece about the various levels of efficiency in the two systems.