Carbon Capture: Miracle Cure for Global Warming, or Deadly Liability?

Technology to siphon off carbon dioxide from power plants and insert it into rock formations has the government, industry and many leading environmental groups wiping their brows and sighing, "phew." They say "carbon capture and storage" could be one of the central keys to unlocking how the world beats back climate change.

But for a growing list of critics, injecting carbon dioxide into the earth is as risky as sticking a Botox needle into a brow -- who really knows what's going on under the skin? And because this climate cure comes with no prescription to radically change the world's energy diet, skeptics say carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a diversion and a false solution.

CCS is the process of collecting carbon dioxide emissions from sources such as fossil fuel-burning power plants before it reaches the atmosphere and storing it in deep geological formations or in the ocean. While the technology to capture the carbon is already commercially available, and CO2 injection pilot projects are under way, any large-scale plans to capture and store carbon have been mostly elusive.

What's clear, however, is that efforts to push for CCS as one of the most promising technological fixes are heavily under way, just as holes in the plan are slowly bubbling to the surface.

This month, several scientists testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Science, Technology and Innovation that major financial investments are urgently needed to make CCS available within the next decade. Howard Herzog, a principal researcher with Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Laboratory for Energy and the Environment, said a commitment of $1 billion a year is needed.

The meeting coincided with new legislation introduced by Sen. John Kerry, who chairs the subcommittee, to advance CCS. His bill would establish three to five coal-fired "demonstration" plants with CCS technology, and three to five facilities for sequestration, another term for CCS.

In October, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced it was writing CCS regulations, and last week, OPEC leaders unveiled CCS as the showpiece of their new "energy and environment" agenda.

Not to be left out, some environmental groups are taking their turn around the track with the CCS baton. In July, the National Resources Defense Committee (NRDC) joined Herzog and several other scientists in penning a letter supporting CCS. Other environmental groups supporting CCS are the World Resources Institute, Environmental Defense, and the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

CCS as a bridge

While the warnings about the effects of climate change are stark, governments have continued to shovel fossil fuels as if they weren't going out of style. Coal plants in the United States spew out 1.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year, dozens of new coal plants are elbowing each other in the queue, and China and India are throwing around coal like a newly rich lottery winner tosses cash.

With all the coal and oil usage, breaking the addiction seems more like drug-induced crazy talk than a reality -- which is why groups like the NRDC say CCS would help ease the world into detox while turning to renewable energy.

The NRDC-signed letter says, "The world still relies heavily on fossil fuels though, and breaking this dependence, even with greatly accelerated energy efficiency and renewables deployment, will not happen overnight. Practical reason demonstrates that we urgently need a means to decarbonize fossil fuel use. CCS is a technology capable of doing so."

Professor Robert Jackson, chair of Global Environmental Change at Duke University, said CCS should be a short-term strategy. "Because of the abundance of coal resources in this country, and because of our current reliance on coal, I do think, with some reservations, that this is a technology that we should push hard for and figure out if it works," he said. "And if it works, use [CCS] as a bridge to better forms of energy generation in the future."