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from the my-solar-panels-are-covered-in-soot dept.
Ken_g6 writes:
Wired today reports on continued coal use around the world and efforts to promote carbon capture and storage (CCS).
Today coal produces more than 40 percent of the world's electricity, a foundation of modern life. And that percentage is going up: In the past decade, coal added more to the global energy supply than any other source. Nowhere is the pre-eminence of coal more apparent than in the planet's fastest-growing, most populous region: Asia, especially China.
Many energy and climate researchers believe that CCS is vital to avoiding a climate catastrophe. Because it could allow the globe to keep burning its most abundant fuel source while drastically reducing carbon dioxide and soot, it may be more important - though much less publicized - than any renewable-energy technology for decades to come. No less than Steven Chu, the Nobel-winning physicist who was US secretary of energy until last year, has declared CCS essential. "I don't see how we go forward without it," he says.
Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs projects that solar power will be cost-competitive with other electricity sources in the US by 2033. So will we build more coal plants or tear them down?
(Score: 2, Informative) by mascot on Thursday March 27 2014, @11:44AM
Here in the UK the government announced that no new Coal power stations would be built without CCS. There was one proposed power station, Hunterstone Clean Coal, which was to have CCS for 25% of its output. The power station was abandoned due to escalating costs and now no CCS power plants are proposed. Instead old coal power plants will be kept on the system for longer. These are now very lucrative as coal has fallen in price (largely due to being displaced from the American market by cheap gas). Coal has actually been steadily growing as a component of our energy mix.
There is a demonstration CCS plant in Norway and some capacity on the drawing board in the USA but not much activity. This is one of those big things that gets talked about far more than it gets done.
There is no real technical challenge- indeed Carbon Dioxide is sometimes injected into oil wells to improve oil recovery (see enhanced oil recovery). The oil industry has probably done far more CO2 injection than the CCS industry. The challenge is entirely commercial- the bottom line is governments don't want to provide the subsidies necessary for CCS to be commercially attractive. Coal power without CCS will always be cheaper than Coal Power with CCS- I think the price rise is about 25% assuming that a geologicaly suitable aquifer is available and close ( a big if).
TL;DR The Propaganda war on climate change has swung in favor of the skeptics and fossil fuel industry so governments aren't minded to fund this work in a meaningful way