Dear IDE Reader:

Our energy world will never be the same again, thanks to BP. But in re-examining our energy priorities, one sector remains ignored and all-but forgotten. And no way that should be the case, says our own Laura Rodini, IDE’s Chief Operating Officer. For the surprising lesson of BP’s Gulf Disaster, read below.

It’s been 90 days since the BP oil spill began in the Gulf of Mexico, and while BP managed to place a cap on top of the spewing oil late last week, there is no guarantee that the spill is contained.

There’s been a depressing amount of oil spilled - 9 times more oil than the Exxon Valdez, and growing!

And now with hurricane season underway, containment efforts are in danger.

Right now Congress is investigating whether deepwater drilling really is a safe means of oil production.

Which leads us to Andy Gordon’s very interesting pick in this month’s Sound Profits newsletter. You might call this a ‘contrarian pick.’

It’s a substance people normally think is dirtier than oil.

But in light of all that’s going on in the Gulf, I’d say it’s time to think again!

Coal Mythbuster: It’s Not Dirty

Coal is the most misunderstood and underrated of all the energy sectors. Since the 70s, we have tripled our consumption of coal. It provides half the electricity we use.

Yet, everybody discounts coal while championing their favorite pie-in-the-sky alternative…

• Obama doesn’t get it. He’s using the BP crisis to push one of his pet projects – the development of solar and wind energy sources – into the forefront of technology development.

• The World Bank doesn’t get it either. They’re also pushing so-called clean energy on developing countries.

• And most investors don’t get it. They’re getting into other oil majors like Exxon Mobil and Chevron instead of investing in coal.

What these folks fail to understand is that coal is not dirty. The amount of emissions released into the atmosphere has actually shrunk by 40%.

That’s because today’s power plants emit far less pollutants (nasty stuff like SO2, NOX, Particulates, mercury) than the plants from the ‘70s, according to the National Energy Technology Laboratory.

And “scrubbers” installed in older power plants get rid of 99% of the pollutants that used to escape through their chimney stacks. In 2005, 22% of coal-fired capacity east of the Mississippi had these scrubbers. By the end of this year, over 50% of capacity is expected to be scrubbed.

That’s 90.6 gigawatts of coal-fired generation that will be retrofitted with new scrubbers by the end of 2011, according to the EIA.

The other good thing about coal is that we simply have a lot of it lying around….about 262 billion tons, according to the Energy Information Agency.

It accounts for 94% of all our fossil energy reserves – there’s more coal than oil in the U.S. And there’s enough coal in the world to last us another 235 years.

Add in the fact that coal is cheap to use. It’s the number-one fuel of China for a reason, you know.

It’s also hard to replace. Every man, woman and child in the U.S. consumes 3.8 tons of coal per year. That is the equivalent of 17,593 Big Macs.

Another way of looking at this is that the U.S. would have to build 250 nuclear reactors…or produce 17 more trillion cubic feet…or build 500 more damns the size of the gigantic Hoover Dam to replace the coal we use.

How are you going to come close to replacing that? The answer of course is you can’t.

In this month’s Sound Profits issue, Andy recommends one company that’s primed to ride coal’s under-the-radar comeback for major gains. As a Master Limited Partnership, it doesn’t have to pay taxes on its profits. Because it’s allowed to pass on the bulk of its income to shareholders, it sports a juicy 6.6% dividend!

As demand from China and India continue to rise (and maybe the US too, once it sees the light on dangerous offshore oil rigs), this company is primed to shine. In fact, Andy is projecting 80% gains in under two years!

Andy says that coal is not the “bridge to the future” as the so-called energy specialists claim it is. Coal is the future.

For all of the details – including Andy’s Buy Under price - sign up for the Sound Profits newsletter today. You can read all of the details about Sound Profits here.