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The Coal Paradox <br />We can't live without it. But can we survive with it? <br />PETER ESSICN, AURORA <br />N A SCORCHING AUGUST DAY IN <br />southwestern Indiana, the giant Gib- <br />son generating station is running flat <br />` out. Its five 180-foot-high boilers are <br />gulping 25 tons of coal each minute, <br />sending thousand-degree steam blasting through <br />turbines that churn out more than 3,000 mega- <br />watts of electric power, 50 percent more than <br />Hoover Dam. The plant's cooling system is strug- <br />gling to keep up, and in the control room warn- <br />ings chirp as the exhaust temperature rises. <br />But there's no backing off on a day like this, <br />with air conditioners humming across the <br />Midwest and electricity demand close to record <br />levels. Gibson, one of the biggest power plants <br />in the country, is a mainstay of the region's elec- <br />tricitysupply, pumping enough power into the <br />grid for three million people. Stepping from the <br />sweltering plant into the air-conditioned offices, <br />Angeline Protogere of Cinergy, the Cincinnati- <br />based utility that owns Gibson, says gratefully, <br />"This is why we're making all that power." <br />Next time you turn up the AC or pop in a <br />DVD, spare a thought for places like Gibson and <br />for the grimy fuel it devours at the rate of three <br />100-car trainloads a day. Coal-burning power <br />plants like this one supply the United States with <br />half its electricity. They also emit a stew of dam- <br />aging substances, including sulfur dioxide-a <br />major cause of acid rain-and mercury. And <br />they gush as much climate-warming carbon <br />dioxide as America's cars, trucks, buses, and <br />planes combined. <br />Here and there, in small demonstration proj- <br />ects, engineers are exploring technologies that <br />could turn coal into power without these envi- <br />ronmental costs. Yet unless utilities start build- <br />ing such plants soon-and lots of them-the <br />future is likely to hold many more traditional <br />stations like Gibson. <br />Last summer's voracious electricity use was <br />just a preview. Americans' taste for bigger houses, <br />along with population growth in the West and <br />air-conditioning-dependent Southeast, will help <br />THE HIGH COST OF CHEAP COAL 99 <br />