Technology is winning the war on coal

Technology is winning the war on coal

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Regulators now want to make CCS more alluring. New rules from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency mandate that any new coal-fired power plant willrequire at least part of its CO2 pollution to be captured and stored. The levels in the proposal would allow 1,100 pounds of CO2 per megawatt-hour of electricity produced to be emitted, the amount of gas spewed by the average new power plant burning natural gas. (Of course, to truly combat climate change, even that pollution would have to be captured and stored.)

The question now relates to whether the technology is ready for wide deployment. “It is happening now,” argues Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, a point backed up by a Congressional Research Service report from October and the new Kemper power plant. In fact, that facility is the first large-scale effort to move CCS beyond the scale of demonstration projects. The 550-megawatt coal-gasification power plant, fitted with CCS, is scheduled for completion in 2014. “It’s a monster,” says Moniz, who recently toured the site.