Will we not have Clean Coal/ Carbon capture and storage?

“Clean coal’ is like a healthy cigarette,’” says Blan Holman, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Cente. “It doesn’t exist.”

BusinessWeek says “The catch is that for now—and for years to come—”clean coal” will remain more a catch-phrase than a reality.” The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) does not expect CCS to be commercially viable until at least 2050. Nor does Oil-giant Shell who “doesn’t foresee CCS being in widespread use until 2050.”

The NewScientist says that earliest possibility for deployment of CCS on a large commercial scale is not expected before 2030. CCS cannot deliver in time to avoid dangerous climate change.

Concerns about the feasibility, costs, safety, and liability of CCS also make it a massive gamble – one that risks taking attention and investment away from the deployment of renewable energy sources.

Costs -
CCS could lead to the doubling of plant costs, and an electricity price increase of 21-91%. The US Department of Energy (DOE) recently pulled out of the only “clean coal” pilot project with CCS technology in the US due to massive budget increases from initial estimate of $800 million to $1.8 billion.

Wasteful and Inefficient -
The technology uses between 10 and 40% of the energy produced by a power station. Wide scale adoption of CCS is expected to erase the efficiency gains of the last 50 years and increase energy consumption by one-third. Retrofits are very expensive and can carry such high efficiency losses that the plants become uneconomical.

Safety -
The world has no experience in long term storage of CO2. A 2006 United State Geological Survey (USGS) field experiment showed there is every chance that carbon dioxide will behave in ways that are totally unexpected. The researchers were surprised when the buried CO2 dissolved large amounts of the surrounding minerals responsible for keeping it contained.

A recent survey of Carbon Capture Journal by Greenpeace says “1,000 ‘climate decision-makers and influencers’ around the world revealed substantial doubt in the ability of CCS to deliver. Just 34% were confident that retrofitting ‘clean coal technology’ to existing power plants could reduce CO2 emissions over the next 25 years without unacceptable side effects, and only 36% were confident in its ability to deliver low-carbon energy from new power plants.
New Coal – with the hope of CCS is not a reality for years to come - Carbon capture will not be ready in time to save ourselves from the catastrophe.