See my notes on how much it cost to betray the public trust at WUSTL. -BG
'Clean coal', CCS and CSG will not save fossil fuels – their game is up | Ian Dunlop
“Clean coal” is neither new nor clean. These technologies can reduce emissions by up to 40% relative to conventional practice but that does not solve our problem when the global carbon budget has already been exhausted. Furthermore, costs are increased by up to 30%, rendering coal even less competitive with renewables.
Years of research have failed to establish the basis for CCS expansion at scale. CCS works where emissions are stored in depleted oil and gas reservoirs, which the oil industry has practised for decades. Storage in other types of geological structures is far harder. The few commercial operations in the world today are in the former category. The substantial additional costs of CCS again reduce coal’s competitiveness, particularly if you refuse to price carbon, as the government is doing. CCS will be useful at the margin but it will not save fossil fuels from their inevitable demise.
