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11 September 2011, Council on Foreign Relations

Carbon Capture and Green Technology

While carbon capture fitted coal plants are opening all over the world, the global demand for cheap energy is climbing. The initial investment for carbon capture technologies, though, is high, and green technologies are struggling to have an impact on pollution levels.

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In June 2011, American Electric Power halted their flagship integrated clean coal and power project at the Mountaineer plant in West Virginia. The venture, jointly funded by AEP and the U.S. Department of Energy, was meant to be an international showcase for a promising environmental technology, carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), which steeply reduces the greenhouse gas emissions from large industrial facilities. In the wake of the project’s end, the future role of CCS remains an open question.

Since 2004, when Tad Homer-Dixon and I wrote “Out of the Energy Box” (Foreign Affairs, November/December 2004), the energy sector has changed dramatically. Key events along the way included Hurricane Katrina, the global financial crisis, the Arab Spring, and the tragedies of the disasters at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Our assessment of CCS is basically the same now as it was in 2004: Yes, CCS remains a critical technology. But more needs to be done to develop and implement it, especially in the policy world.

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