Coal operators and their supporters are offering the public false hope when they promote pumping carbon dioxide underground to solve the global climate change problem, a new report from an environmental group says.
Coal operators and their supporters are offering the public false hope when they promote pumping carbon dioxide underground to solve the global climate change problem, a new report from an environmental group says.
Carbon capture and sequestration, or CCS, is expensive and risky, wastes energy and cannot deliver greenhouse pollution reductions in time, according to the report being issued today by the international group Greenpeace.
"Carbon capture and storage is a scam," said the report's author, Emily Rochon, climate and energy campaigner at Greenpeace International. "It is the ultimate coal industry pipe dream."
Greenpeace's report is called "False hope: Why carbon capture and storage won't save the climate." The 44-page document is based on peer-reviewed scientific papers and a host of other research by government agencies, private groups and international organizations.
Research cited includes work by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Massachusetts Institute for Technology, federal government laboratories and papers published in the journals Science, Environmental Science and Technology, and Geology.
Among the conclusions:
Adequate technology is not expected to be commercially available until 2030, while leading climate experts say carbon dioxide emissions need to level off by 2015 to avoid the most severe impacts of climate change.
Coal-fired plant capacity is expanding so rapidly that as much as 70 percent of carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation in 2050 may not be technically suited for carbon capture and storage.
Carbon capture and storage has not been tested at a scale needed for full-sized power plants, and designers of newly proposed plants have failed to integrate the "capture" equipment needed.Coal operators and their supporters are offering the public false hope when they promote pumping carbon dioxide underground to solve the global climate change problem, a new report from an environmental group says.
Carbon capture and sequestration, or CCS, is expensive and risky, wastes energy and cannot deliver greenhouse pollution reductions in time, according to the report being issued today by the international group Greenpeace.
"Carbon capture and storage is a scam," said the report's author, Emily Rochon, climate and energy campaigner at Greenpeace International. "It is the ultimate coal industry pipe dream."
Greenpeace's report is called "False hope: Why carbon capture and storage won't save the climate." The 44-page document is based on peer-reviewed scientific papers and a host of other research by government agencies, private groups and international organizations.
Research cited includes work by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Massachusetts Institute for Technology, federal government laboratories and papers published in the journals Science, Environmental Science and Technology, and Geology.
Among the conclusions:
Adequate technology is not expected to be commercially available until 2030, while leading climate experts say carbon dioxide emissions need to level off by 2015 to avoid the most severe impacts of climate change.
Coal-fired plant capacity is expanding so rapidly that as much as 70 percent of carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation in 2050 may not be technically suited for carbon capture and storage.
Carbon capture and storage has not been tested at a scale needed for full-sized power plants, and designers of newly proposed plants have failed to integrate the "capture" equipment needed.
The technology uses between 10 percent and 40 percent of the power plant's energy capacity, meaning that wide-scale adoption would wipe out the efficiency gains of the past 50 years and increase resource consumption by one-third.
Carbon capture and storage technology could double the operating cost of power plants and lead to electricity price hikes of between 21 percent and 91 percent.
Greenpeace is releasing the report today to coincide with the start in Pittsburgh of a joint U.S. Department of Energy and energy industry conference on CCS.
In West Virginia, the Greenpeace report is being released and promoted in part by the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition.
"Those of us who live in the so-called 'billion-dollar coalfield' are fed up with the coal industry's false promises," said coalition member Carol Young of Delbarton, Mingo County. "We shouldn't throw billions more in taxpayer money into this costly, unproven technology. Let's take all that money and invest it in renewable energy jobs for West Virginians."
Carbon dioxide is the most important man-made greenhouse gas, and global concentrations of it have increased from a pre-industrial figure of 280 parts per million to nearly 380 parts per million in 2005. Coal-fired power plants account for more than a third of global carbon dioxide emissions.
Last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that to minimize greenhouse damage, carbon dioxide concentrations would need to be stabilized at about 445 parts per million by 2015. Doing so would require a carbon dioxide emissions reduction worldwide of between 50 percent and 80 percent, the IPCC said.
"There is an immediate window for the U.S. to address the most urgent effects of global warming and CCS is a dangerous distraction from real solutions," said Kate Smolski, legislative coordinator for Greenpeace USA. "Every dollar spent on this unproven and potentially dangerous technology is a dollar not available for clean and proven technologies such as wind and solar."
To contact staff writer Ken Ward Jr., use e-mail or call 348-1702.
