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1. The smokestacks of the Schwarze Pumpe coal power plant in
eastern Germany are an impressive sight. This giant plant towers over the
surrounding fields and villages, supplying 1,600 Megawatts of energy for the
region.
2. If you're concerned about global warming, however, you might be
less impressed. The towers belch out around 36,000 tons of carbon dioxide
every day – one of thousands of coal-fired plants worldwide that together
produce around 20 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions and over 40
percent of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
3. But hope is near, just hundreds of meters away, engineers are
experimenting with what could be the future of the coal industry – carbon
capture and storage (CCS). This technology traps carbon dioxide that would
otherwise be released into the atmosphere when burning coal. Instead of
releasing in the atmosphere for centuries, the captured CO2 can be liquefied
and stored in places like depleted oil and gas fields.
4. Although the pilot project is very small in scale (50 times smaller
than the neighboring coal power plant), hopes are high about the
technology’s potential to curb carbon dioxide emissions globally,
particularly because global dependence on coal continues to grow rapidly.
Worldwide coal consumption is expected to increase by 65 percent by
2030, with most of growing demand coming from India and China.
5. Some U.S. lawmakers have even proposed putting a moratorium on
all new coal-fired power plants that do not have CCS facilities, despite the
fact that the technology is probably at least a decade away from maturity.
6. Aside from further technical development, the other major obstacle
to widespread use of CCS is its high cost. Utility Vatenfall wants to have a
commercial CCS plant running by 2020, and aims to cut costs to 20 euros per
ton of captured and stored CO2. But McKinsey & Company estimates current
cost at between 60 and 90 euros – well above the current price of a ton of
CO2 on the global carbon market. CCS technology also consumes energy and
thus raises the cost of energy production.
7. Several environmental advocacy organizations have also voiced
concerns about the environmental impacts of injecting liquefied CO2
underground and deep into the oceans. There is also little knowledge about
how long the CO2 will stay underground. The World Wide Fund for Nature
(WWF) says that before investing billions of dollars, governments should be
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