Okay, so a lot of scientists and engineers are working on CCS. That's clear. The question is: Will their hard work and expertise translate into a viable, affordable mechanism for eliminating, or even curtailing the massive, climate-altering impact of the carbon dioxide that spews inexorably, interminably from the world's thousands of coal-fired power plants?
Remember, also, that there are impacts from fossil-fueled power plants other than carbon dioxide? There's sulfur dioxide, a precursor pollutant for acid rain, and mercury, and the particulate matter that is also a prime and vicious air pollutant. See this post from April on black carbon and its effects. Remember that nearly all of the power plants in the rapidly industrializing countries of China and India have virtually no pollution controls. There's the sludge and the toxic ash too, and there's also massive water use. See this from the Union of Concerned Scientists. And then there's the environmental havoc that coal mining wreaks. See The Crime of Mountaintop Removal Mining from May.
This is all just a sketch of the environmental problems. See the magisterial Big Coal for the full picture. It's a truly excellent book, in the tradition of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.
Okay, so let's look at the technology. The scientists I noted on June 11 below have called for an accelerated program of research and development on CCS. See this story from "The Times." The US Dept. of Energy has a lot of information on carbon sequestration programs at this website. Bellona, a foundation begun in the 1986 to highlight Norwegian environmental problems and then later the specter of nuclear contamination from Russia, concerns itself with CCS. See this from them. Ten things you need to know about carbon capture is also useful from "The Times." Like the article from "Trading Carbon" cited in the previous post, it looks at some of the things that are going right and some that are going wrong for CCS.
I referenced Shell in the previous post. If you are interested, they're having a webcast at 11 AM Eastern Time on this Thursday, June 19, to discuss CCS. You'll be able to ask questions online. Go here to register.
There certainly is a truckload of work getting done. There's no getting around that. The question is, though, is there more heat than light? Are we getting anywhere or are we just spinning our wheels?
