Comments on: Dispatches from Fantasy CCS-Land

By: Nancy LaPlaca

Nancy LaPlaca — Sun, 11 May 2008 23:57:35 +0000

Thanks for the dispatch, Becky.

These coal companies should wake up and start buying Concentrating Solar Power and wind companies.

By: Luke

Luke — Thu, 08 May 2008 01:56:40 +0000

It would be great if the government would enact a moratorium on coal plants that don’t capture 100% of their carbon emissions (on their own dime), because that would mean no coal plants at all for at least a couple of decades. It would also be great if it rained ice cream.

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 08 May 2008 01:31:13 +0000

Why wouldn’t it be a good idea to demand that the utility industry capture and sequester its carbon pollution, precisely b/c it DOES increase the retail price of electricity? I don’t see that ‘expensive’ is a problem, as long as there is no govt subsidy covering it.

An increased price for coal-based electricity would do more to commercialize efficiency and renewable alternatives than anything else, right?

Also, a mandate to capture CO2 would favor gasification over pulverized coal. this would allow other pollutants to be easily removed from the exhaust. underground gasification would allow use of the resource w/o surface disturbance. These are a lot of potential pluses.

I think you are reacting against this technology based on the idea that it is a permanent solution underwritten by taxpayers — when instead it should be considered a temporary transitional technology imposed on the utilities by law, w/o subsidy.