One thing to bear in mind is that energy production is MUCH more efficient when done at scale (i.e. power plant) than having lots of little power plants (i.e. internal combustion engines).
There's still the issue of transporting the energy, but the waste/consumption to output ratio definitely favors generating power at large scale.
[edit: Another thought. I'm not sure about this and can't find a quick reference, but I would guess that scrubbing the emissions at a coal plant can be done more effectively than at the per-internal combustion engine level.]
> …scrubbing the emissions at a coal plant can be done more effectively than at the per-internal combustion engine level.
This is true, especially because you can put a fence around a coal plant, while you can't always put a fence around your catalytic converter to keep meth-heads from stealing it for the platinum[1].
There's still the issue of transporting the energy, but the waste/consumption to output ratio definitely favors generating power at large scale.
[edit: Another thought. I'm not sure about this and can't find a quick reference, but I would guess that scrubbing the emissions at a coal plant can be done more effectively than at the per-internal combustion engine level.]