Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

On the heels of yet more hair-raising news about global warming (see “Springtime doom and gloom and climate appraisals” below), MIT just released a new report about the future of coal. The scientists, resigned to the reality that coal is an abundant and cheap source of fuel, describe ways to mitigate its impact on the climate.

Their main source of hope is carbon capture and sequestration — stowing CO2 underground, where it can’t heat up the atmosphere:

According to (Dr. John Deutch, Institute Professor, Department of Chemistry), “… Demonstration of technical, economic, and institutional features of (carbon capture and sequestration) at commercial scale coal combustion and conversion plants will give policymakers and the public confidence that a practical carbon mitigation control option exists, will reduce cost of (carbon capture and sequestration) should carbon emission controls be adopted, and will maintain the low-cost coal option in an environmentally acceptable manner.”

But that process is still in its infancy (we wrote about a pilot study a few years ago), and faces major technical hurdles. It would be nice to place our faith in carbon storage, but the largest sequestration project operating today is stowing a mere million tons a year of greenhouse gas — and coal-burning power plants in the U.S. alone spew out a billion and a half tons a year.