Carbon Capture and Obama
The article titled” Making of a Clean Coal President” analyses the future action likely to be taken by the President.
Three factors have cemented Obama's support for carbon capture and sequestration technology: political necessity, economic opportunity and the backing of some of the most powerful mainstream environmental organizations operating inside the Beltway.
He ordered a high-level task force to deliver a plan within 180 days determining how "to overcome barriers to the widespread, cost-effective deployment of CCS within 10 years, with the goal of bringing 5 to 10 commercial demonstration projects on line by 2016."
In August of this year, he'll be handed a plan for a massive expansion of clean coal from the task force he constituted , and he may be able to use it to help Democrats in November mid-term elections, as well as in the run-up to his own re-election bid in 2012. Sure to be of value is the ongoing $120 million ad campaign from the coal lobby that is coincidentally airing new spots for clean coal .
In his State of Union message, in the paragraph devoted to clean energy innovation, he omitted solar and wind and instead listed nuclear energy, biofuels, clean coal and offshore drilling. It set off howls of protest, which he calmed a few days later by announcing that the federal government would reduce its own emissions 28% by 2020.
Obama's support for CCS has been consistent.
Further, with China already leading the world in the export of solar and wind hardware, CCS offers the prospect of being an exportable big ticket advanced technology that even the Chinese will want to buy.
With Obama's unequivocal support of clean coal, his EPA — thanks to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling on the Clean Air Act — is now the last thing standing in the way of open season for the coal industry to expand without concern for carbon regulation.
More: http://bit.ly/9nHoad
Labels: algae carbon capture-CCS, CCS- Obama-Task force –Carbon capture and storage-Alstom-Pierre Gautier, Clean coal
posted by powerplantccs at
4:47 PM
7 Comments:
If we can develop the technology to capture the carbon pollution released by coal, it can create jobs and provide energy well into the future." Obama
"This clean coal task force is a catastrophe," Davies of Grenpeace said. "Nobody is asking the administration for an ROI [return on investment] calculation. We're getting rolled."
"No more clean coal. It's a unicorn. It doesn't exist,"Gillian Caldwell,executive Director of 1 Sky
Clean coal-fired plants cost 20 percent more to build than standard plants but long-term expenses are 20 percent less than standard plants, Ed Rubin, an environmental engineering scientist with Carnegie Mellon University, told USA Today.
http://www.powerplantccs.com
Only two clean coal-fired plants operate in the United States but that number may increase because the newer plants are more readily retrofitted to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, the newspaper said.
Alstom Power President Philippe Joubert said, “As a global leader in developing carbon capture technologies, Alstom is delighted to see the Obama Administration promoting the power of CCS technologies to create and preserve jobs, reduce carbon emissions, and safeguard the continued reliability and affordability of electricity.”
CCS is an area where the government and the private sector need to work in cooperation.
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