Huffington Magazine Issue 66 | Page 65

AP PHOTO/U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY THE CARBON QUANDARY carbon dioxide is then relatively simple, but creating a pure oxygen environment is not cheap. Of course, that’s the challenge with all of these techniques. Each has advantages and disadvantages, depending on the application, but no matter the method, adding the CO₂-removal process to a power plant significantly saps its energy output, and that adds dearly to the cost of electricity production. Estimates of this socalled CCS energy penalty vary widely, ranging from 10 percent to 40 percent of total output. As such, CCS remains prohibitively expensive. In a 2010 report, the Department of Energy estimated that CCS technologies would make the construction of a new, conventional coal plant — which can cost as much as $2 bil- HUFFINGTON 09.15.13 lion even without CCS — as much as 80 percent more expensive. Newer data from the Energy I