{"id":4279,"date":"2009-01-08T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-01-08T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www-prod.greenpeace.org\/usa\/campaign-updates\/4279\/the-true-cost-of-coal\/"},"modified":"2024-12-09T16:47:29","modified_gmt":"2024-12-09T16:47:29","slug":"the-true-cost-of-coal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/usa\/the-true-cost-of-coal\/","title":{"rendered":"The True Cost of Coal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class='p4descriptive_paragraph'>Traditionally considered the cheapest fuel around, the market price for coal ignores its most significant impacts. These so-called &#8220;external costs&#8221; manifests themselves as damages such as respiratory diseases, mining accidents, acid rain, smog pollution, reduced agricultural yields and climate change.<\/p>\n<p>The harm caused by mining and burning coal is not reflected in its price per ton or its costs for a kWh of electricity, but the world at large is nevertheless paying for it. This report seeks to answer the question: Just how much are we paying for the use of coal as an energy source?<\/span><\/p>\n<figure class='wp-block-image size-large p4featured_image'><img src='https:\/\/storage.googleapis.com\/planet4-usa-stateless\/2024\/11\/57d65964-true-cost-coal.png' alt='true-cost-coal.png' \/><figcaption class='wp-element-caption'><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/static\/planet4-usa-stateless\/2024\/11\/077f5110-true-cost-coal.png\" alt=\"True Cost of Coal\" width=\"464\" height=\"657\" \/><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/storage.googleapis.com\/planet4-usa-stateless\/2024\/12\/dc48057b-the-true-cost-of-coal.pdf\">Download document<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Num. pages:<\/strong> 92<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Traditionally considered the cheapest fuel around, the market price for coal ignores its most significant impacts. These so-called &#8220;external costs&#8221; manifests themselves as damages such as respiratory diseases, mining accidents,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":6573,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"p4_og_title":"","p4_og_description":"","p4_og_image":"","p4_og_image_id":"","p4_seo_canonical_url":"","p4_campaign_name":"","p4_local_project":"","p4_basket_name":"","p4_department":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[254],"tags":[6,100],"p4-page-type":[29],"class_list":["post-4279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fossil-fuels-cat","tag-climate","tag-fossil-fuels","p4-page-type-research"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v23.9 (Yoast SEO v23.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The True Cost of Coal - Greenpeace<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/usa\/the-true-cost-of-coal\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The True Cost of Coal\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Traditionally considered the cheapest fuel around, the market price for coal ignores its most significant impacts. 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