Since its inception 10 years ago, the Department of Energy’s Carbon Sequestration Program – managed within the Office of Fossil Energy and implemented by the National Energy Technology Laboratory – has been developing both core and supporting technologies through which carbon capture and storage (CCS) will become an effective and economically viable option for reducing carbon dioxide (CO_2) emissions from coal-based power plants. Successful research and development will enable CCS technologies to overcome the various technical, economic, and social challenges, such as cost-effective CO_2 separation and transport, long-term stability of CO_2 sequestration in underground formations, monitoring and verification, integration with power generation systems, and public acceptance. The programmatic timeline is to demonstrate a portfolio of safe, cost-effective greenhouse gas (GHG) capture, storage, and mitigation technologies at the commercial scale by 2012, leading to substantial deployment and market penetration beyond 2012. These GHG mitigation technologies will help slow GHG emissions in the near-term. They also provide the potential to ultimately stabilize and reduce GHG emissions in the United States.
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