FutureGen "Cleanish Coal" Plant Cancelled
By Alexis Madrigal EmailFebruary 01, 2008 | 6:04:57 PMCategories: Energy
Futuregen_artistcon200px The controversial attempt to build a coal plant that captures and stores its greenhouse gas emissions took another step backward yesterday. The Department of Energy pulled its financial support from a project known as FutureGen, which would have been a first-of-its-kind cleanish plant. The DOE cited the rising costs of the project. From the environmental blogs through cleantech to the Wall Street Journal, the move was seen as slowing the development of so-called carbon capture and sequestration technologies.
Rhetorically, it sure looks bad for the Bush administration to bang the clean coal technology drum during the State of the Union and then cut its most visible support for the technology the next day.
Rest at the URL.
I've said for a while that there is no such thing as cheap, clean coal.
The real bad news there is that nobody says that Bush is going to stop pushing coal.
For those who actually read the article, it's my opinion that the real problem with respect to sun and wind power is energy storage for intermittent power, a problem I expect to be solved on the basis that there's a lot of research going on in this area.
The kind of energy storage that'll make solar/wind power a real replacement for base load power should also provide energy storage solutions that'll make electric vehicles with range comparable to current gas engine cars practical and affordable, along with mobile phones we only need to charge yearly, and laptops you might have to charge as often as once a week if you use them a lot.