The coal industry and its allies in the press have long engaged in a creative bait and switch. First, they tout the cheap and efficient nature of coal as an energy source. Those facts are cited to justify building new coal gasification and carbon capture facilities, which are euphemistically referred to as "clean coal."
If we're talking about an existing dirty coal plant that was built several decades ago, then yes, it produces relatively cheap power (if you don't count government subsidies and externalized costs of pollution). But do new clean coal facilities live up to the promise of providing a cheap power source?
A battle over the Tenaska company's coal gasification and carbon capture project proposed in Taylorville, Illinois provides a definitive answer: absolutely not. In fact, clean coal would produce some of the most expensive energy in the world. That's why it was opposed by much of the state's business community, including the Illinois Chamber of Commerce and most utility companies.