[hackernewds]

You do have significant differences between noxious fumes and clean burning between burning plastic vs burning fossil fuels. The energy captured from the burn is obviously not the same - same reason you can't just set fire to a "bowl" of plastic.

[ars]

What noxious fumes? Plastics are very clean burning if you do it properly (which isn't hard to do).

They burn MUCH MUCH cleaner that coal for example.

> The energy captured from the burn is obviously not the same

There is nothing obvious about it. I don't understand what you mean? Plastics have around the same energy density as oil.