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We don't want to leave the coal in the ground, and that necessarily is going to involve better technology with regard to clean uses of coal.

It's not as though we can keep burning coal in our power plants. Coal is a finite resource, too. We must find alternatives, and it's a better idea to find alternatives sooner then wait until we run out of coal, and in the meantime, put God knows how many trillions of tons of CO2 that used to be buried underground into the atmosphere.

If you want improvements in coal, you've got to keep people in the business.

You have to recognize what the markets are doing, what the rules and regulations are doing, and all the more reasons that we've got to find some more solutions in particular with coal.

Further, the United States is moving ahead in the development of clean coal technology. There are vast coal reserves in our country, and when it is burned cleanly, coal can provide a resource to supply a large amount of our energy requirements.

And we have abundant natural energy resources in the country. We haven't been taking adequate advantage of them, and we can burn coal in a clean way; we could improve the grid.

If coal is going to be used, the only response - because it is the dirtiest of all fuels - is that we have to learn how to do carbon capture and storage and we have to learn how to do it quickly on a commercial scale.

I think we'll still be operating coal in 2030. Whether we will be in 2040, I think, is a question, or in 2050.

Anytime we make additional investment in a coal plant, we are really challenging whether that investment is economic.

Coal is absolutely critical to our nation's economic health and global competitiveness.