Test Your Knowledge: How Much Do You Know About Coal?

4 million GWh. A gigawatt (GWh) is one billion watts. For comparison, an incandescent light bulb may use about 60 watts of energy. So 4 million GWh is 4 million billion watts! In 2007 California's total energy demand was 285,000 GWh. The available renewable energy in the 11 western states could supply CA, the world's eighth largest economy, more than 14 times over in a clean and sustainable manner.

67 million tons of C02. That is the equivalent emissions of 11 million cars!

55%! And that percent may be increasing . There are more than 70 new proposed coal power plants in the U.S. resulting in an additional 200 million tons of CO2 emissions a year. That's like adding approximately 30 million petroleum-fueled cars.

2030, if even then! These technologies are in the earliest testing phases and will require decades to be feasible on a large commercial scale. This will not be soon enough. In 2007 the Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Dr. Rajendra Pachauri said, "If there's no action before 2012, that's too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment."

The average US household puts out over 1000 pounds of C02 every month from coal-fired electricity. Each year, that comes to almost 13,000 lbs of CO2 and about 6072 KWh generated from dirty coal, enough energy for an electric vehicle to drive between 16,000 - 36,000 miles.