THE CARBON QUANDARY
day, only 70 or so such projects
are in the planning stages, and
only a handful are actually under
construction. Many of these facilities, including the beleaguered
FutureGen project in Meredosia,
Ill., have moved forward in fits
and starts over the last decade,
as whispers of tough new climate
policies have come and gone, and
meager government subsidies
have waxed and waned.
According to a catalog maintained by Herzog’s office at MIT,
only one large-scale demonstration
project, in Norway, is currently
operational worldwide. Without a
real price on carbon, that’s unlikely
to change, Herzog says.
“You really need to put a price
on carbon and to raise it over
time,” he says. “Let these technologies come in over time.”
Speaking at Georgetown University in June, U.S. President Barack
Obama did introduce a new plan
for addressing climate change
that included a call for tough new
CO₂ emissions limits not just on
proposed new power plants, but
on existing ones as well. He also
carved out $8 billion in new federal loan guarantees aimed at developing various advanced fossil
energy technologies — including
HUFFINGTON
09.15.13
CCS. This comes atop some $6
billion that has been appropriated
by Congress since the 2008 fiscal
year for carbon capture development, according to a Congressional
Research Service report published
“You really need to put
a price on carbon and
to raise it over time.
Let these technologies
come in over time.”
earlier this month.
The president’s newly appointed energy secretary, Ernest J.
Moniz, has also stated clearly that
CCS — both for coal and natural
gas plants — is a national imperative if the president’s goal of cutting national carbon emissions by
80 percent over the next 40 years
is to be met.
Whether this will actually happen is impossible to know. Critics
of Obama’s climate agenda, which
naturally includes deep-pocketed
fossil fuel inter