The Economist: “Carbon Capture and Storage is mostly hot air”

Published by yochizakai, March 6th, 2009 global warming 4 Comments

It’s not often that I post a link to a Fox News or Economist article, as both news sources that often blur the line between editorial content and objective reporting. Today I’m happy to report that The Economist has given up hope in the false promise of clean coal. Check it out:

Carbon capture and storage: Trouble in store

Politicians are pinning their hopes for delivery from global warming on a technology that is not quite airtight

Read the full article from The Economist print edition: Mar 5th 2009

4 Responses to “The Economist: “Carbon Capture and Storage is mostly hot air””

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1 Juliana Williams Mar 6th, 2009 at 3:15 pm

Thanks for posting this Yochi. Things are starting to heat up with carbon capture and sequestration in terms of building broader public support for it. It has been sold to the public so heavily that I have heard people say that we have no chance of halting climate change without it.

We don’t know all the solutions – we don’t currently know exactly how to stop global warming. What we do know is that some steps are better than others. Some work right now and others are still unverified proposals. The fact of the matter is, we don’t that CCS will safely and permanently store CO2 and the timeframe to figure that out is longer than our window for action. No, we can’t currently power all of our energy use with wind and solar based on transmission and storage, but they are advancing at a rate that is phenomenal given lukewarm government support. CCS can’t even get off the ground without governments taking on all the risk. CCS still require burning coal, which means more extraction, more coal ash pollution, more dependence on a 19th century technology. So while we can’t guarantee that renewables and efficiency hold all the answers, we do know that they are our some of our best steps forward.
2 R Margolis Mar 6th, 2009 at 4:37 pm

I often wonder if much of the delay in action on carbon is the lack of a clear, easy, cheap way to make low-carbon power. There is certainly a combination of source that will work and not be exhorbinantly expensive, but the lack of a certain path seems to have the politicians and business leaders nervous.
3 yochizakai Mar 6th, 2009 at 5:43 pm

First Solar recently announced that they broke the $1/watt price for production. This means that utilities ordering solar can count on much lower prices than previously imagined. Clean energy companies are making cheap renewable energy production happen. Once we reach breakthroughs like this $1/watt production price in storage and transmission, we’ll be ready to seriously ramp up production. These are exciting times to be living — it’s gonna happen soon! The price of CCS will keep on rising, but the price of wind and solar will keep.
4 R Margolis Mar 6th, 2009 at 6:23 pm

That is good news, however I have not heard comparable success stories regarding energy storage or the political issues regarding transmission. I think that Juliana is right in that no single technology holds all the answers.

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About

As a sophomore at Walter Johnson High School in Maryland, Yochi was recruited to join the SSC's Montgomery County Student Environmental Activists. After a couple of weeks of hanging out with the SSC'ers, he started organizing what turned into a county-wide campaign that gained media attention and attracted the support of the county council. While an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment, Yochi founded a business partnership called Brewing Hope with farmers in Chiapas, Mexico. Working with students, faculty and businesses interested in promoting the fair trade system, Yochi set up a program that not only sold coffee, but also created a relationships between coffee growers and latte drinkers. Brewing Hope's student delegations visit Mexico to learn about coffee production and meet with indigenous communities while farmers from Chiapas travel to speak at educational events in the Midwest. He turned over the management reins of Brewing Hope to study the connection between biodiversity, economic sustainability and coffee certifications in Central America. Yochi now works at Co-op America, the national green business network, expanding the market for fair trade products and pressuring businesses to adopting forward thinking policies on climate change. Yochi's first blog was titled "The Neoliberal Chopping Block"

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