Attached is a copy of the 190-page MIT Study on the Future of Coal, released Nov 1.   It clearly endorses the principle of carbon capture and sequestration as a necessity, but points out in the bluntest possible terms the overwhelming scale of the undertaking and the pathetically inadequate efforts undertaken so far to achieve it.  The statistics below, from a table at the beginning, offer compelling reasons to believe that it just aint gonna happen, at least not in a time frame that offers any prospect of meaningful mitigation of the effects of global warming.

Table in Exec. Summary at p. ix

Today fossil sources account for 80% of energy demand:
Coal (25%), natural gas (21%), petroleum (34%), nuclear
(6.5%), hydro (2.2%), and biomass and waste (11%). Only
0.4% of global energy demand is met by geothermal, solar
and wind.1


50% of the electricity generated in the U.S. is from coal.2


There are the equivalent of more than five hundred, 500
megawatt, coal-fi red power plants in the United States with
an average age of 35 years.2


China is currently constructing the equivalent of two, 500
megawatt, coal-fi red power plants per week and a capacity
comparable to the entire UK power grid each year.3


One 500 megawatt coal-fired power plant produces approximately
3 million tons/year of carbon dioxide (CO2).3


The United States produces about 1.5 billion tons per year of
CO2 from coal-burning power plants.


If all of this CO2 is transported for sequestration, the quantity
is equivalent to three times the weight and, under typical
operating conditions, one-third of the annual volume of
natural gas transported by the U.S. gas pipeline system.


If 60% of the CO2 produced from U.S. coal-based power
generation were to be captured and compressed to a liquid
for geologic sequestration, its volume would about equal the
total U.S. oil consumption of 20 million barrels per day.


At present the largest sequestration project is injecting one
million tons/year of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the Sleipner
gas field into a saline aquifer under the North Sea.3

Notes
1. IEA Key World Energy Statistics (2006)
2. EIA 2005 annual statistics (www.eia.doe.gov)
3. Derived from the MIT Coal Study

--
William V. DePaulo, Esq.
179 Summers Street, Suite 232
Charleston, WV 25301-2163
Tel: 304-342-5588
Fax: 304-342-5505
william.depaulo@gmail.com
www.passeggiata.com

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