En route to hydrogen, the world will have to burn huge amounts of fossil fuels--and find ways to deal with their climate-changing byproducts. Even if the hydrogen economy were technically and economically feasible today, weaning the world off carbon-based fossil fuels would still take decades. During that time, carbon combustion will continue to pour greenhouse gases into the atmosphere--unless scientists find a way to reroute them Governments and energy companies around the globe have launched numerous large-scale research and demonstration projects to capture and store, or sequester, unwanted carbon dioxide (see table). Although final results are years off, so far the tests appear heartening. "It seems to look more and more promising all the time," says Sally Benson, a hydrogeolo-gist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. "For the first time, I think the technical feasibility has been established."
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