Report: Burying greenhouses gases will be key

To halt catastrophic climate change, the US has less than a decade learn how to capture and store carbon dioxide.

from the March 15, 2007 edition

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Among the report's recommendations:

•To make CCS cost-competitive, nations should impose a tax or some equivalent mechanism that charges companies at least $30 for every ton of CO2 that they emit. That would lead to a significant reductions in greenhouse gases by 2050.

•Large-scale CCS demonstration projects should begin right away. At least three are needed in the US – and 10 worldwide – to test various geologic formations.

•Nations should close any loopholes that would allow utilities to build new coal plants that don't capture CO2, yet reap financial rewards.

"We have confidence that large-scale CO2 injection projects can be operated safely," the report says. At a minimum, such technology could halve America's carbon-dioxide emissions from coal by 2050.

Doing so would almost certainly require an investment of billions of dollars to build pipelines that ship compressed CO2 to geological formations around the country.

The research needed to create this infrastructure should go forward now, the scientists urge, even if the US hasn't settled on a specific climate-change policy.

In Congress, at least five pieces of global-warming legislation are pending. But neither Capitol Hill or the White House is acting quickly enough, the report says.

Last fall, the US Department of Energy announced $450 million in spending over 10 years on tests of underground capacity at seven locations. The department is also pursuing a $1 billion "FutureGen" coal plant that captures emissions and stores them underground. It's slated to be finished by 2012.

These issues "should be addressed with far more urgency than is evidenced today," the panel says.

Department of Energy officials respond that research is moving quickly and has identified enough suitable underground geology to store 200 years' worth of energy emissions.

"This administration is making significant investments in research and development of clean-coal technologies," says Megan Barnett, a DOE spokeswomen in a statement. She says the federal government is focused on "testing and further demonstrating carbon sequestration technology for broader commercial use."

Climate scientists unconnected to the study who have reviewed it say its findings are on target.

"The study is correct that we need to substantially ramp up the investment in order to make carbon capture and sequestration work," says John Holdren, a Harvard University professor and leading researcher on climate change. "If we don't, we're cooked."

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