Aside from running out of coal, I don't really see a point to having electric furnaces, seeing as they produce the exact same amount of pollution as their coal-burning brethren. That seems odd to me. Surely, burning things would produce SOME pollution, but not nearly as much as burning coal to do so.

Maybe half pollution?

Fair enough. I'll halve the pollution on the stone electric furnace in the next release, which will give the same pollution per operation for stone electric, steel electric and the vanilla electric furnace, and make the electric versions of the stone and steel furnaces each produce half the pollution of their burner counterparts.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention, it looks like this change to pollution was introduced in 0.17 alongside changing the burner furnaces' power consumption.

Fantastic! This should keep me, the biters, and the trees a little bit happier. Thanks.