Energy Efficiency All Grown Up

摘要

Clean-coal investment has been stalled by significant uncertainty across all major aspects of the investment decision:1. Unclear timing of clean-coal technology commercialization,2. Economic dependence on market prices for energy commodities,3. Volatility in the relative economic position of IGCC andpulverized-coal plants compared with natural gas plants,4. Trade-offs between lower CCS costs and higher upfront capitalrequirements,5. Commercialization of existing coal-plant retrofits vs. new builds,and6. A significant number of CCS legal and regulatory hurdles thatmust be addressed before investors will become comfortablefunding an asset that otherwise could become a large liability.