I've tried several different ways to figure out what you meant by this and cannot figure it out.
How do you imagine stack scrubbers are related to transmission losses? It doesn't matter if the power plant is immediately adjacent to the electrical load or a thousand miles away.
The requirement for pollution controls doesn't change, until you get very close to major cities, then it becomes more stringent, meaning expensive and causes even more losses.
I think he meant that:
They are two independent clauses, rather than clause being dependent on the other.
But as you pointed out, coal gasification still requires scrubbers, and the process is more energy intensive than the power line losses.
Well, it's not exactly a "transmission loss" but it's a loss nevertheless. Just like a gasoline powered vehicle loses about 80% of its fuel's energy as heat...the coal burning process is only so efficient.
The coal doesn't burn clean, or scrubbers wouldn't be necessary, the gasification process is much hotter, much more like a catalytic converter temperature, and those same scrubbers wouldn't likely be in the mix.
I really doubt those units are free, use no energy, require no maintenance and are not detrimental to overall efficiency.
Of course if the coal was near to a given city or there were an established rail connection for supplying coal, the pipeline and transmission issue would also not apply.
What I can tell you from looking at my power bills, CMP couldn't "efficiency" their way out of a wet paper bag, not to mention the third world crappy reliability.
Needless to say, I think power should be produced near where it is consumed, and let those who overuse it suffer the environmental consequences of their demands. I hate the uber-grid.