Obama Wants Carbon Capture and Storage

Obama sent out a memo yesterday extolling the economic virtues of coal and explaining how he intends to keep all that carbon from destroying the planet by sweeping it under the rug injecting it into the ground:

The Environmental Protection Agency is developing regulations that address the safety, efficacy, and environmental soundness of injecting and storing carbon dioxide underground. The Department of the Interior is assessing, in coordination with the Department of Energy, the country's geologic capacity to store carbon dioxide and promoting geological storage demonstration projects on public lands. All of this work builds on the firm scientific basis that now exists for the viability of [carbon capture and storage] technology.

This diagram below gives you the poet's version of how carbon capture and storage would work. There are only a handful of working CCS facilities at the moment. The photo above is of a Siemens CCS test facility near Dresden.

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Anyone who saw Obama's unscripted debate knows he's trying to be tactful in the way he talks about coal because states like West Virginia really need that money. And, in reality, we can't get off coal overnight. As long as there is any sort of transition period, I suppose it makes sense to explore whether carbon capture can work. But pumping all our excess carbon underground-even if it works-certainly isn't a great long-term solution.