Carbon Capture and Sequestration

President Obama has issued marching orders for the rapid national adoption of "clean coal" technology. Last week, shortly after his budget address, he ordered a high-level task force to deliver a plan within 180 days determining how "to overcome barriers to the widespread, cost-effective deployment of CCS within 10 years, with the goal of bringing 5 to 10 commercial demonstration projects on line by 2016."

Obama's executive office memorandum looks like a big victory for the coal industry, which was already handed $3.8 billion in last year's stimulus act for carbon capture and storage (CCS) research and development and deployment. He did not simultaneously order a similar plan for a big roll-out of solar or wind energy to level the playing field.

Making good on campaign promises, the president is throwing the full weight of his administration behind a moonshot effort to make coal the "clean" energy technology of choice and open a federal pathway to a profitable future for one of the nation's most polluting industries.

Three factors have cemented Obama's support for carbon capture and sequestration technology: political necessity, economic opportunity and the backing of some of the most powerful mainstream environmental organizations operating inside the Beltway.

Canada's Conservative government is funneling two-thirds of its $860 million "clean energy" fund into carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. Most of that $580 million is headed to Alberta to clean up the province's dirty tar sands operations, which emit more global warming gases than the entire nation of New Zealand.

If it sounds like hogwash, or rather greenwash, it is.

The tarry bitumen of the oil sands is one of the world's filthiest hydrocarbons. Mining it produces two to six times more greenhouse gases than light oil.

In theory, CCS, or so-called "clean coal," could strip carbon from exhaust gases, pipe it away and bury it in depleted oil and gas reservoirs elsewhere in Alberta. But that doesn't hold up in practice, and there's no evidence that it ever will.

There is a deal on the table in Washington with the potential to create a truce between two sides that have been at war for many decades. The deal takes the form of the Waxman-Markey bill – the framework for federal climate law now moving through Congress.

While it is still uncertain whether climate legislation will pass this year, the draft bill contains a formula for compromise that could create an unprecedented handshake between the fossil fuel industry and environmentalists and unite them for the first time in the battle to control greenhouse gases.

Testimony on the Waxman-Markey bill kicks off today, Earth Day. This one should be recognized for the perplexing and difficult day that it has become: a bittersweet moment in which the contours of political compromise have become stark for all concerned; and a defining moment in which both sides in the historic war are weighing painful agreements.

For the fossil fuel industry, it's a mandated cap on carbon that will squeeze roughly 80% of current emissions from the economy by 2050; and for environmentalists, it's accepting the necessity of a still speculative technology called carbon capture and storage (CCS). Many greens have come around to the opinion that CCS is fundamental to solving global climate change, and the fossil fuel industry realizes it needs federal help developing the technology in order to stay in business.

So at this legislative crossroads, the nation is on the verge of deciding to store vast quantities of CO2 – not in the atmosphere any longer – but in the Earth instead.