Carbon Capture and Sequestration

Carbon Capture and Sequestration is the name of a technology, still in development, that is supposed to help us clean up the emissions that come from the burning of coal. It has acquired the status of a myth, the kind that when it's mentioned, thinking ceases.

The basic idea of CCS is this: you capture the carbon dioxide produced by coal burning and sequester it underground, presumably forever. In some cases, the carbon dioxide can serve a useful purpose. For example, oil companies already are injecting CO2 into old wells to squeeze out remaining deposits of crude.

All the technological components for CCS are ready for commercialization. And elected leaders and candidates with any sensible position on global warming, embrace CCS as a vital part of the answer to continued use of coal as an energy source. For example, Obama, who has taken as good, and as typical, a stance as you'll find on the subject:

As president Obama will significantly increase the resources devoted to the commercialization and deployment of low carbon coal technologies. Implementing these technologies as soon as possible is vital to the transition to a clean energy economy and will help other nations dependent on coal reduce their emissions as well. In addition to addressing new facilities, Obama will work to ensure that existing coal facilities are retrofitted with carbon capture and sequestration technology as soon as it is commercially available.

It's a nice position, but how realistic is it, and how much of a solution is CCS, really?

It looks like CCS is too expensive, too slow in coming, and potentially too dangerous to be feasible as a real solution.

Too Expensive

To outfit a new coal plant with CCS will add 20% to 30% to construction costs. Immediately, that jacks up the price of a kilowatt hour of electricity. In addition, it is likely that within a few years, federal law will place a price on carbon, further adding to the kilowatt hour price. At the end of the day, electricity from coal will cost about as much, perhaps more, as juice from renewable sources, which have a benefit coal can't offer: zero carbon emissions.

The cost equation gets worse for existing coal plants. Retrofitting with CCS is even more expensive than new construction with CCS. And of the 150 coal plants now being slated to be built in the US, not a single one incorporates CCS technology. Some claim to be "carbon capture ready" but that's about as far as we are. Each of those 150 coal plants, if built, would lock us in for 50 years to the cheap, polluting technology of the 19th century.

Too Slow in Coming

Even though CCS technology has been developed, it has yet to be commercialized. CCS will still require huge federal and private sector investment, and the timeline for making CCS standard on all new coal plants is realistically on the order of 20 years. If we don't solve climate through other means by then, game over.

Potentially Too Dangerous

It's possible for CO2 stored underground to rapidly escape. Anything living in the vicinity would immediately be asphyxiated. In 1986, an eruption of CO2 of volcanic origin killed 1700 villagers and all their cattle in Cameroon. We can sequester carbon only where geology cooperates. How many storage sites, away from population centers and reachable by CO2 pipelines, exist? Further, even if we can avoid catastrophe, there is the danger of slow leaks. We could go to a lot of trouble to get the CO2 underground, and have it end up in the air anyway.

So, when you hear CCS, don't think the acronym that comes trippingly off the tongue is the answer to coal, even though we like to think technology can solve all problems.