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Though Newer Sources of Power Are Being Built, Coal Remains a Cheap BTU

Coal's surprising new value proposition. Using coal can "reduce" CO2!!! Hadn't heard that one before myself, but here it is toward the end of this article..
money.cnn.com/2009/04/.../
""Sokol says, energy companies will need to produce more energy while emitting less carbon dioxide.

Electric cars will be one answer. They generate fewer greenhouse gas emissions than cars that burn gasoline, and they have lower fuel costs, even when oil is cheap. That's because electric engines are more efficient than internal-combustion engines, and because generating energy on a large scale (in coal or nuclear plants) is less wasteful than doing it on a small scale (by burning gasoline in an internal-combustion engine).

The numbers look something like this: Assume you drive 12,000 miles a year, gas costs $2 a gallon, and electricity is priced at 12¢ per kilowatt, about what most Americans pay. A gasoline-powered car that gets 20 miles to the gallon - say, a Chevy Impala or a BMW X3 - will have annual fuel costs of $1,200 and generate about 6.6 tons of carbon dioxide. Equip those cars with electric motors, and fuel costs drop to $400 a year and emissions are reduced to about 1.5 tons. """

I'm not sure if the actual numbers prove this to be true. However, even if overall CO2 in China does not decline from the development of electric cars, something of equal importance will happen. With a plug-in electric car, compared to an internal combustion engine, most of the pollution will be created out of the cities and much further into the country. For hundreds of millions of Chinese, air polution in the city is a real health issue. Also, an electric plug-in car that could go 60 miles without burning any petroleum would allow China to substitute energy from its vast reserves of coal for that of imported oil. The potential for plug-in electrics to move pollution out of the cities is a story worth watching.

What the US can do that China can not is use NG as a transportation fuel. China does not have vast enough NG supplies to do that. What America should be investigating in is plug in PLUS NG powered cars and light trucks. Couple that with NG powered commercial vehicles and America could lower greenhouse gas emissions while reducing the price of driving and reducing our dependence on foreign oil. Right now, 1M BTU s of NG cost less than $5. It takes seven gallons of gasoline to provide a million BTU s.