Coal-based electricity generators are now investing more than $500 million to find ways of capturing the carbon dioxide (CO2) pollution caused by burning this cheap but dirty resource and burying it deep in the earth.
There are more than 80 carbon capture and storage (CCS) demonstration projects in the pipeline in the U.S., with nearly 20 more outside the country, according to the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE). They range from research into new techniques to actual commercial-scale storage projects in a bid to lay the groundwork for broad commercial deployment.
"Over the last 30 years, the coal-based electricity sector has invested more than $50 billion in technologies to reduce traditional emissions regulated by federal and state clean air act laws,” Joe Lucas, ACCCE senior vice president, said in a statement Monday. “Now we're seeking to expand what we've learned in that process to effectively guide and jump-start efforts to develop and deploy technologies that capture, transport, and safely store CO2."
Yet the trade group has spent more than $125 million in the first nine months of the year trying to persuade Congress to put off climate change regulations until CCS technologies are ready -- which many say won't happen for at least another decade -- and another $45 million on advertising that advocates clean coal as a climate change solution, according to the Center for American Progress.
The environmental think tank pegged the industry's investment in CCS over the past several years at $3.5 billion -- far more than the current $500 million investment figure offered by ACCCE -- calling it paltry and a fraction of the $57 billion in combined 2007 profits for ACCCE’s 48 members. Its own research turned up 18 CCS projects, fewer than the 80 being touted by ACCCE this week.
The International Energy Agency estimated it would take investment of up to $20 billion for short-term demonstrations, CAP pointed out, and another $15 billion and decade worth of research to really get CCS off the ground.
CAP called the sector's efforts a "smoke screen."
"Yet their paltry CCS research investment demonstrates that the ads and other public clean coal activities are merely designed to delay global warming solutions without suffering a public relations black eye," CAP said. "Meanwhile, atmospheric greenhouse gas levels grow, ice sheets melt, hurricanes become more ferocious, and the day of reckoning for the Earth looms closer."