Pew Center: Government action needed on CCS

It seems that everywhere you go, more and more people are talking about carbon capture and storage (CCS) as being a key and essential element in meeting greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals.

At George Washington University’s greenhouse reductions symposium this week, Steve Caldwell, regional policy coordinator for the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, outlined a few provisions their group would like to see included in upcoming climate change policy.

Caldwell acknowledged that carbon capture and sequestration technology, while not a silver bullet, is critical to reducing costs associated with greenhouse gas abatement. To get there, Caldwell outlined a number of policy recommendations, including government action on CCS to:

• Resolve key legal and regulatory barriers

• Fund commercial CCS demonstrations

• Deploy by 2015 5 GW of coal-powered plants with CCS and at least one pulverized coal retrofit

• Create a dedicated and protected trust for CCS programs

As we’ve said before, the government plays an essential role in helping us get carbon capture technologies to market—and that includes helping to secure funding and policies that help insulate the public from some of the financial risks that come with technological advancements.