But even in the most optimistic scenario, we will be using fossil fuels
such as coal for years to come. China and India aren't going to
suddenly shut down all their new coal power plants, nor will Western
industrial giants close their factories overnight. Solar and wind may
be today's sexy new energy sources, but coal is the fastest-growing
fuel in the world, boasting twice the known gas reserves and three
times the known oil reserves. "Coal is here to stay," Milton Catelin,
head of the World Coal Institute, told the World Future Energy Summit
in Abu Dhabi on Jan 19.
That's why governments and industry have recently begun to pay more
attention to carbon capture and storage (CCS) — a process that traps
CO2 produced by factories and gas or coal power stations and then
stores it, usually underground.
The potential impact of CCS is huge. The Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change says CCS could contribute between 10% and 55% of the
cumulative worldwide carbon-mitigation effort over the next 90 years.
The International Energy Agency says CCS is "the most important single
new technology for CO2 savings" in power generation and industry, and
will need to account for about one-fifth of the carbon-mitigation
effort this century — reducing carbon emissions as much as renewable
energy sources will.
Though it requires up to 40% more energy to run a CCS coal power plant
than a regular coal plant, CCS could potentially capture about 90% of
all the carbon emitted by the plant. To solve the problem of climate
change, we "need to use every option we can," says Nick Otter, head of
the newly created Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute (GCCSI)
in Australia, which will fund pilot programs and network CCS efforts
around the world. "And we've got to have some realism to the approach."
Like most technologies, CCS was developed as a way to make money. Oil
companies started injecting CO2 into underground oil-bearing strata in
the U.S. in the 1970s. The technique — known as enhanced oil recovery —
allowed them to extract up to two-thirds more oil than by simply
pumping the fuel to the surface.
The first country to store CO2 underground deliberately to keep it out
of the atmosphere was Norway. When the government there introduced a
carbon tax in the early 1990s, energy giant Statoil began capturing the
CO2 from its Sleipner natural-gas platform in the North Sea and pumping
it into a saline-filled sandstone layer under the seabed. Since 1996,
the operation has cut Norway's CO2 emissions by almost a million tons a
year, or about 3% of the country's 1990 CO2 emissions. Other projects
have followed, including one on the U.S.-Canada border that has been
pumping CO2 from a coal plant into an oil reservoir for the past decade.
The question is whether the technology can be scaled up and used on
power plants everywhere. In the past couple of years, governments in
Australia, Canada, China, Europe, Japan and the U.S. have begun
investing in small-scale pilot projects to figure out the best way to
take CO2 out of power-plant emissions and store it underground. The
European Union has set aside $1.5 billion to build seven CCS pilot
projects; Washington has promised millions of dollars for trials and a
large-scale CCS power plant; and the Australian government is spending
almost $100 million a year on the GCCSI. Last year the world's first
CCS coal plant opened in Germany. Though it's small, the operation
captures some 240 tons of CO2 a day and trucks it to an empty gas field
where it is injected into an underground aquifer.
Not everybody supports the rush to CCS. To the frustration of Western
governments and industry leaders, Brazil has consistently blocked the
inclusion of CCS in the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism,
which allows rich countries to meet reduction targets by investing in
green plants and technology in the developing world. Analysts believe
that Brazil doesn't want money diverted to CCS from avoided
deforestation projects, from which the country benefits, though
Brazilian oil giant Petrobras is a keen backer of carbon capture.
Critics say large-scale CCS deployment is decades away and that the
world is better off focusing on renewable energy. Some environmental
groups say that, just like nuclear-power stations, CCS technology
leaves behind a dangerous waste material that has to be stored.
Greenpeace says there's no way of knowing that carbon will stay
underground for centuries and has called CCS "unproven, risky and
expensive." Opponents to CCS point to an infamous natural disaster in
Cameroon in 1986. Perhaps triggered by a landslide, a crater lake
called Nyos emitted a large cloud of CO2 that suffocated 1,700 people.
Could storing carbon set us up for future disasters?
It's unlikely, say an increasing number of industry figures who want
governments to embrace CCS as the most pragmatic response to climate
change. Bjorn Berger, a research adviser to Norway's Statoil, says
using CCS is a no-brainer. "It has been staying where we put it," he
says of the carbon there. "We study it very carefully and know exactly
what it does. If we get realistic about the fact that we need the
fossil fuels in the development of places like China and India, then
this is a way to make that acceptable." Otter, CEO of the GCCSI, says,
"The only way to understand CCS is to actually do it." Addressing the
energy summit, he urged governments to move quickly. "We cannot do
without this, in my view. We're looking for really positive and quick
action ... Deployment is what we're talking about. Not research."
By SIMON ROBINSON / ABU DHABI, Time.com , Friday, Jan. 22, 2010
The Chapters 
In the push to cut the amount of carbon we release into the atmosphere, solutions usually focus on how to reduce our power use (drive less, insulate our houses better) or how to replace our carbon fuels (coal, oil) with renewable sources (solar, wind, biofuels).
