Enviro Infighting
I read today that environmentalists are divided about carbon capture. While Greenpeace is going around saying that carbon capture is a "pipe dream," other environmental advocacy groups are taking a less cynical approach.
The World Wide Fund for Nature, an international group that boasts over 5 million supporters, has come out in support of carbon capture as a way to use technology to make coal as clean as possible.
On its Web site, the WWF (side note: it's still hard for me to see that acronym without thinking of the old World Wrestling Federation... but I digress) has a report called "Vision for 2050" (click for PDF), which says the group has questions about carbon capture but that "it is essential that fossil-fuel plants are equipped with carbon capture and storage technology as soon as possible - all by 2050." The report continues: "Clearly, while zero- and low-emission technologies are being brought to maturity and widely deployed, coal, oil, and gas will continue to play a part in the energy mix."
Now, keep in mind, WWF isn't crazy about coal. But they take the reasonable position that we can't meet our energy needs (both here in the U.S. as well as around the world) without coal, so pursuing the carbon capture option may be necessary to meeting our energy and environmental goals.
Anyway, back to that article I mentioned at the top of this post... there's seems to be some interesting divergence of opinions among environmental groups on this issue. Besides WWF, several national branches of Friends of the Earth refused to sign the Greenpeace statement criticizing CCS.
I, for one, am hopeful. We would look forward to working with some of these groups that believe that investing in the research, development and deployment of carbon capture technologies is an important part of our energy and environmental strategy. As I say all the time, some people are looking for a "silver bullet," but meeting this challenge will require something more along the line of "silver buckshot."
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