Carbon Capture Gambit Declined

摘要

When corporate America turns down nearly a billion dollars in government subsidies, one suspects something interesting. And so it is that the Department of Energy's corporate partners have backed out of three out of six carbon capture and sequestration demonstration projects, despite being offered subsidies of $100-$300 million per project. Readers not yet at their acronym quota can find details in the June 2013 Congressional Research Service report "Carbon Capture and Sequestration: Research, Development and Demonstration." The technology for CCS (to use its common name) is an exemplar not of tangible progress on climate change, but of the daunting challenges we face in effectively responding. It proposes to burn coal, capture the carbon dioxide emissions, and store them underground. It is at once too old and too new.