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

By: R Margolis

R Margolis — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 22:23:17 +0000

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.

By: yochizakai

yochizakai — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 21:43:23 +0000

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.

By: R Margolis

R Margolis — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 20:37:06 +0000

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.

By: Juliana Williams

Juliana Williams — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 19:15:18 +0000

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.