Carbon Capture and Sequestration Conference gets underway in USA
May 19, 2008
As the seventh annual Carbon Capture and Sequestration Conference gets under way in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, Greenpeace has published a report that slams the status and promise of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.
The report, entitled False Hope, concludes that, despite what the coal and power industries claim, CCS will "not prevent more than a whiff of global warming pollution from reaching the atmosphere in the next few decades".
In the report, Greenpeace says CCS aims to capture carbon dioxide emissions from power station smokestacks and "dump it underground".
Greenpeace says that CCS is being held up as a "silver bullet" solution in combating the climate crisis, but points out that the technology has yet to be used on any large-scale coal-fired power plant anywhere in the world.
The environment campaign group also argues that there are "huge unknowns" regarding feasibility, cost, environmental implications and liability, which have not been thought through.
Greenpeace also says that the increase in greenhouse gas emissions needs to be halted in the next decade, but CCS will not be ready in time.
The report claims that the suggestion that the technology may be made to work some time in the future is being used to justify building new coal-fired power plants without any form of carbon capture.
A source at Greenpeace said, "What makes most sense is not building coal-fired power plants in the first place. Carbon is already stored safely underground: we call it coal. Let's leave it there."
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