Scientists See Coal As Key Challenge
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/22/AR2007102200978.html
By
CHARLES J. HANLEY
The Associated Press
Monday, October 22, 2007; 2:26 PM
-- The proliferation of coal-burning power plants around the
world
may pose "the single greatest challenge" to averting
dangerous
climate change, an international panel of scientists reported
Monday.
Governments and the private sector are spending too little
on
research into a partial solution _ technology to capture and store
the
carbon dioxide emissions from such plants, the group said.
The study by
15 scientists from 13 nations, "Lighting the Way: Toward
a Sustainable Energy
Future," was commissioned by the governments of
China and Brazil and is the
product of two years of workshops
organized by the InterAcademy Council, the
Netherlands-based network
of national academies of science.
The
174-page report details current and developing technologies, and
government
incentives and other policies that could lead both the
developed and
developing world to clean, affordable and sustainable
energy supplies.
"The first thing it says, really, is that conservation and
energy
efficiency will remain for the next couple of decades the
most
important thing the world can do to get on a sustainable path,"
said
co-chairman Steven Chu, Nobel Prize-winning physicist and director
of
California's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Such steps are
urgently needed, the panel said, not only to cut back
emissions of carbon
dioxide and other gases blamed for global
warming, but also to extend basic
energy services to 2 billion poor
people worldwide and reduce the potential
for international conflict
over energy resources.
The report took
note of the growing role of coal-fired power plants
in some countries,
"despite increased scientific certainty and
growing concern about climate
change."
China expects to open one new coal-fired plant per week over
the next
five years. In the United States, plans for more than 150 new
coal
plants have been announced since the late 1990s, although
some
recently have been scrapped or delayed because of climate and
other
concerns.
European and U.S. scientists and engineers are
working to develop
capture-and-storage technologies, whereby power
plants'
carbon-dioxide emissions might be sequestered long-term in
abandoned
oil wells or other underground cavities. But the InterAcademy
Council
panel said such work is poorly financed.
"Some would argue
this is an absolutely cornerstone policy with
currently inadequate investment
and attention," panelist Ged Davis, a
British energy economist, told
reporters in a teleconference Monday.
The report noted public investment
worldwide in energy research and
development was estimated at $9 billion in
2005. That should be at
least doubled, it said, and there should be
"worldwide introduction
of price signals for carbon emissions," to push
future public and
private investment in a carbon-saving direction.
Under the Kyoto Protocol, which requires emissions reductions
by
industrialized nations, the European Union operates a "carbon
price"
system whereby industries not using up their quotas can
sell
allowances to others that overshoot their quotas. The United
States
rejects the idea of such mandatory emissions cutbacks.