More than 100 environmental groups joined together Monday, urging politicians to ignore the false promise of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), which they say will only prolong dependence on dirty and dangerous energy sources and reward the world’s biggest polluters.
CCS technology seeks to capture carbon dioxide from power plants and store it underground. But, according Emily Rochon, climate and energy campaigner at Greenpeace International. "Carbon capture and storage is a scam. It is the ultimate coal industry pipe dream."
Rochon is the co-author of a report released by Greenpeace on Monday, which points out that CCS technology is not expected to be commercially available until 2030, while the world’s leading climate experts have said global greenhouse gas emissions must peak no later than 2015 and be cut by at least half by 2050 to avoid the most catastrophic consequences of climate change.
On Monday the U.S. Department of Energy announced $126.6 million in funding for two large-scale carbon sequestration projects.
Greenpeace and 112 other environmental groups from 21 nations are calling on governments to invest in proven energy technologies like wind and solar to find a long-term solution to the climate crisis.
Greenpeace says power companies are advertising the CCS as a solution to global warming in order to justify building new coal-fired power plants, the single largest contributor to global warming.
"Governments and businesses need to reduce their emissions-not search for excuses to keep burning coal," Rochon said.
The Greenpeace report states the following reasons why CCS is inadequate for addressing global warming:
- The concept has not been successfully tested at a scale necessary for application to full size power plants.
- Designers have failed to integrate the carbon ‘capture’ and ‘storage’ elements of the proposed technology, the central element of its success.
- CCS uses between 10 to 40% of the power plant’s energy capacity. Wide scale adoption of CCS is expected to erase the efficiency gains of the past 50 years, and increase resource consumption by one-third. For example, for every four CCS-equipped coal-fired power plants, a fifth would have to be added to make up for the new energy demands.
- CCS could double the operating cost of power plants and lead to electricity price hikes estimated between 21 and 91%.
- Storing carbon dioxide underground carries significant risks. Long-term leakage rates as low as 1% could erase any benefit to the climateand open a host of new liability issues.
"There is an immediate window for the U.S. to address the most urgent effects of global warming and CCS is a dangerous distraction from real solutions," said Kate Smolski, legislative coordinator for Greenpeace USA. "To add insult to injury, Congress is attempting to further increase its subsidies to the coal industry by throwing additional taxpayer dollars at this risky technology."
In contrast, Greenpeace believes that greatly improving energy efficiency and relying on renewable energy can halve global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Global renewable energy resources are sufficient to meet six times the world’s current energy demand.
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