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Progress Report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage

Once again we in the USA have been chided by President Bush for being addicted to foreign oil. President Bush was speaking to the March 5, 2008 Washington International Renewable Conference, a meeting of global energy officials. He told the attendees, "we gotta get off oil, America has got to change its habits." He went on to say, "It should be obvious to all, demand has outstripped supply, which makes prices go up."

He is right; we are addicted to oil. We complain about the gasoline and electrical prices, while eighty five percent of us believe that global warming is real and caused by humans. We have not broken the chains of driving our cars or heating our homes in energy inefficient ways. This is mainly because we are not offered affordable alternative energies to break these addictions. The major bet of President Bush is on ethanol, but we are now seeing escalating food prices as our corn goes to fuel production, and now it is projected to be as contaminating as gasoline. Its saving grace is that it keeps our dollars in the USA.
President Bush can hardly take credit for promoting renewable energies when he has held up incentives like production tax credits and refuses to cap carbon dioxide emissions. President Bush reiterated his call for a global cap on carbon dioxide, the main gas behind global warming, but said the United States should not act until nations like China and India do as well. It is actions like these that make one wonder if we will ever break the chains of addiction.
We are currently a second-tier player in the adoption of alternate energies, and we need government incentives to move us to the top tier. We will have a new administration in January 2009 that will, hopefully, be more supportive of alternative energies. It is a good bet that their first moves will be a "cap and tax" bill but should include incentives to help the solar, wind and geothermal industries. It will take time for the alternate energies to gain traction. This means that we will be dependent on coal as an electrical generation fuel for much longer than we would like.
We will need to stop or reduce carbon dioxide pollution if we are to use coal for a longer period when oil becomes more scarce and out of affordable reach. This brings us to the questions of the readiness of the highly touted Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology. The premise sounds great to enable and maintain a quality of life that we are used to

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