President Obama set up a federal task force on Feb. 3 to accelerate the development of technologies to capture and store carbon emitted by coal-fired electric utility generators. It looks as though the administration is having second thoughts about a clean-coal strategy that depends crucially on one pilot project, the plant dubbed FutureGen.

The president's memo directed the task force to prepare a plan in 180 days "to overcome the barriers to the widespread, cost-effective deployment of CCS (carbon capture and storage) within 10 years, with a goal of bringing 5 to 10 commercial demonstration projects online by 2016."

That is an extremely ambitious target. The reason for the urgency is that no one has come

up with a plausible way to meet this country's growing demand for electricity without

continuing to rely heavily on coal. Any progress in slowing climate change consequently

depends on finding ways to burn coal without emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Responding to that logic, in 2003 President George W. Bush launched FutureGen as a

public-private partnership to build a plant that would demonstrate CCS. His administration

canceled it in early 2008, on grounds that it would be too expensive. Obama's energy

department restarted the planning process last year, promising a final decision early this year

on whether to proceed with construction. But there was no mention of FutureGen in the

president's recent memo.

The president may be heeding advice from technical experts—offered repeatedly over the

past several years— that focusing the whole policy on one experimental plant would be a

serious mistake.

"America's Energy Future," a report published last summer by the The National Research Council, warned:

Too little is known at present to determine which power-generation technologies and which storage options could best produce electricity after 2020 if carbon emissions were constrained. Reliable cost and performance data are needed, both for capture and storage, and they can be obtained only by construction and operation of full-scale demonstration facilities... Because of the variety of coal types and the myriad of technology-conversion options for coal, natural gas and biomass fuels, a diverse portfolio of demonstrations of CO2 capture technology will actually be required. Similarly, to sort out storage options and gain experience with their costs, risks, environmental impacts, legal liabilities, and regulatory and management issues, it will be necessary to operate a number of large-scale storage projects in a variety of subsurface settings.

The NRC committee that wrote this report also said that if the country makes an

immediate start it should be possible to gain the necessary information and get 10 gigawatts

of CCS generation in place by 2020.

The Obama administration is also well aware that CCS projects are already under way in

many other countries, notably in Europe and China, and further indecision here risks putting

the U.S. at a technological disadvantage.

The president's memo contained a reminder that passage of cap-and-trade legislation,

which would put a price on carbon emissions, will be necessary to induce utilities to use CCS

technology. "Ultimately," the memo said, "comprehensive energy and climate legislation that

puts a cap on carbon pollution will provide the largest incentive for CCS because it will

create stable, long-term, market-based incentives to channel private investment in low carbon

technologies."

J. W. Anderson is Resources for the Future’s journalist in residence. He previously explored FutureGen in this Weathervane post and this 2008 Weekly Policy Commentary.