Over at Solve Climate, David Sassoon is taking a nice leisurely stroll through the Dept. of Energy’s Carbon Sequestration Technology Roadmap and Program Plan (2007). Some astonishing sights await!
First, he notices that despite some big talk in recent press releases, the DOE road map says frankly that "as a technology and a research discipline, carbon sequestration is in its infancy." Development and testing of key technologies is scheduled for as much as 12 years out.
Then he notices that the DOE’s own estimates show that renewable energy is cheaper than clean coal.
Then he notices, most hilariously of all, that the DOE doesn’t think there’s going to be enough CO2 to run large-scale sequestration tests in the next decade. Why? It’s too expensive!
While huge quantities of CO2 are theoretically available from power plant sources, separation and supply of this CO2 for the carbon storage deployments projects is unlikely because of the expense involved in separating the CO2 in the absence of CO2 emission regulations and/or because of the uncertain reliability associated with utility-scale CO2 separation systems.
The boondoggle Bush ginned up to delay action on carbon regulations can’t pay for itself in the absence of carbon regulations. The irony tickles.
