Science says that avoiding catastrophic climate change means global GHG emissions must peak by 2015 and fall dramatically thereafter. That leaves about six years to shift our energy system away from ever-increasing emissions to a pathway that will keep temperature increases below critical levels. CCS is unproven, and even the most optimistic estimates don't predict commercial readiness before 2020. A more realistic timeframe is 2030. Unfortunately, this fact isn't stopping friends of the coal industry in Congress, who are throwing massive sums of dollars at it.

Money for CCS means less money for real solutions

The US does not need to build new coal plants to meet its energy needs. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission chairman Jon Wellinghoff said as much last month. In a media interview, he confirmed that there is enough renewable energy to meet demand and that coal is too expensive (subscription required). A clean, sustainable energy future is ours for the taking. All we need to do is reach out and grab it. So far, though, Congress has missed this message and has put a fatally flawed idea front and center in its response to global warming.

Choosing CCS inevitably means clean alternatives such as wave, wind and solar power fall by the wayside. The list below covers some of the key reasons why:

• CCS keeps the hope of coal as an energy source alive even when we don't need it. For proof, take a look at the UK. The country is facing an energy gap that could readily be met by fulfilling the country's renewable energy and energy efficiency targets. Instead, the government has gone the CCS route and is proposing to support the construction of 4 new coal plants all while its domestic renewable energy industry is floundering.
• Even proving that the technology can work will require substantial public sector support since companies are unwilling take risk investment on their own. Money for CCS is funneled away from the deployment of existing sustainable technologies and research programs that aim to bring new ones to the market.
• Beyond mere dollars and cents, CCS carries with it a massive opportunity cost. A report by the World Resources Institute estimates that developing the pipeline infrastructure alone for CCS operations in the US would be akin to making an all-out transition to wind energy. It makes little sense to invest limited resources and capital in a system that will be obsolete as soon as coal runs out when we could alternatively be supporting an energy infrastructure that is renewable and not plagued by declining production curves.
• In the United States, the quantity of CO2 that would need to be captured and buried is 2.5 greater than the amount of oil moved around the country daily. Storing CO2 underground will limit the potential to use geothermal energy in some places and stunt opportunities to use energy storage strategies such as compressed air, which is a potential way to harness wind energy to provide baseload power.
• CCS and coal technologies require rigid, centralized energy grids, while maximizing the potential of renewable energy and energy efficiency necessitates a transition to a decentralized and flexible grid.

FutureGen

To underscore the folly of constructing coal plants that depend on CCS, Greenpeace erected a fake billboard at the site where the "FutureGen" plant will be built. The message is simple: “Future site of a $2 Billion dollar hole in the ground.”

The FutureGen project began under President Bush and it served its purpose as a distraction to the real solutions to climate change. Now the Quixotic project is about to receive a fresh lease on life, right at the time when we should be providing maximum effort for turning our energy economy away from coal.

Read more in our CCS FAQ.