Clearly, it's now possible to dramatically cut such pollutants as nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide. But, it's also becoming increasingly real to trap CO2 in trees or bury it underground. By most accounts, energy usage will rise in the coming decades and coal will remain the primary fuel source to generate electricity. Carbon sequestration therefore holds the key to future power plant production using fossil fuels.

"With Congress expected to take action on greenhouse gas issues in climate legislation, it's time to advance this technology for commercial use," says Michael Morris, CEO of AEP, in a prepared statement.

Ever-escalating levels of CO2 contribute to global warming that could cause rising sea levels, floods and extended heat waves. The matter is exacerbated because population around the globe will increase while developing countries are advancing and will use more coal -- all of which will push up the earth's temperature another 2-10 percent by the year 2100, says a United Nations panel.

A report published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology acknowledges coal's prominence and therefore calls on government to provide incentives for utilities to invest in technologies to capture CO2 emissions. Basically, the university advocates a carbon tax that would motivate companies to apply the latest and greatest technologies if they decide to build coal plants.

Without that, it fears a rush to build cheap generators that would have unbearable consequences. The U.S. government, in fact, is leading the charge when it comes to building FutureGen, a zero emissions power facility that costs $1 billion. It is expected to be online by 2012 and will have carbon capture technologies applied to it.

"There are a lot of good things happening in the power-from-coal arena that very few people know about yet," says Paul Grimmer, CEO of Eltron Research in Boulder, Colorado. He expects the first advanced coal generation to hit markets in five years. "The solutions AEP are pursuing for existing power plants are very good but the coming technologies will likely be even better."

Economic Opportunities

Power companies contribute 60 percent of all CO2 emissions in the United States. Older coal-fired facilities could be retrofitted so as to trap the CO2 before it leaves the smokestack. But such remedies are expensive and less efficient than building modern coal plants called integrated gasification combined cycle generators, commonly referred to as coal gasification.

Such plants scrub the mercury, nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide before they would separate the remaining byproducts: CO2, carbon monoxide and hydrogen, which could be used to power everything from cars to power plants. The largest demonstration projects are in Norway, where Statoil is placing 1 million tons of CO2 per year into a saline aquifer deep in the North Sea, and in Canada, where the CO2 is going into the Weyburn Oil field just north of the North Dakota border.

For its part, AEP says that it will follow a dual course of retrofitting older plants while also building modern facilities that have the potential to capture carbon emissions. Meantime, ConocoPhillips, General Electric and Shell Corp. are spending billions to develop not just coal gasification technologies but also the tools to bury CO2.

Canada, furthermore, is building a pipeline to transport carbon dioxide from Alberta's oil sands for sequestration. The chief executive of Alberta's biggest utility, TransAlta, is helping to head the project -- a direct implication of the emphasis now on Canadian oil sands. While that commodity has the potential to displace some Middle Eastern oil, it is also a major contributor to CO2 emissions.

Some environmental organizations bemoan any technologies that would encourage more coal use, with the Sierra Club calling the Canadian government's participation in the pipeline a "subsidy" for the fossil fuel industry. Many environmental groups, however, applaud the efforts to store carbon underground, noting that Asia, Latin America and parts of Africa are undergoing rapid expansion and their energy use will rise as a result.

In the case of Canada, the Natural Resources Defense Council there says that the country could store up to 9,000 megatonnes of CO2, which is 11 times the nation's current greenhouse gas emissions. By developing carbon capture tools, it says that Canada can help meet global energy demand while also earning a profit.

"By deploying carbon capture and storage technology on a wide scale domestically, Canada can demonstrate that this technology is effective in both cost and environmental terms," says the Natural Resources Defense Council. "As other nations develop their own fossil fuel resources, they can look to Canada for the technology to develop those resources in an environmentally responsible way."

All public and private initiatives to sequester CO2 emissions and minimize pollution show resolve. They are expensive undertakings. But, with energy production steadily rising, the endeavors are needed now more than ever.

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