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Blame Congress

Editorial
Published: July 19, 2011

American Electric Power’s decision to shut down [ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/14/business/energy-environment/utility-shelves-plan-to-capture-carbon-dioxide.html ] an ambitious experiment aimed at capturing greenhouse gases from a coal-fired power plant was a disappointing setback to efforts to control harmful global warming emissions from coal, among the world’s most abundant fuels.

It was also a predictable result of Congress’s failure to enact climate change legislation that would have placed a price on emissions and given businesses compelling economic reasons to clean up their plants and develop new technologies. Without industrywide federal standards in place, state utility regulators would not have allowed A.E.P. to recoup its investment through higher prices, making the whole project untenable.

Coal-fired power plants produce one-third of the nation’s emissions of carbon dioxide. Policy makers have other tools to help lower these greenhouse gas emissions, including regulations requiring more efficient plants. What they do not have is breakthrough technologies.

The A.E.P. project, located at a 31-year-old coal-fired plant in West Virginia [ http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/22/science/earth/22coal.html ], was the country’s most advanced attempt to strip carbon dioxide from the flue gases and store it permanently underground in deep-rock formations under the plant. The company had completed a small pilot program, and the Energy Department had promised to pay for half the final $668 million bill. But A.E.P. would have been on the hook for the rest.

When work began two years ago, it was assumed that Congress would adopt a cap-and-trade program — imposing a price on emissions, rewarding companies that found innovative ways to reduce them and providing upfront subsidies for advanced technologies. The House passed such a bill, but the Senate balked.

Most of the other proposals and projects in the United States involve enhanced oil recovery, in which utilities capture carbon dioxide and ship it to oil fields where it is injected into wells to extract more oil. Senator Richard Lugar has introduced legislation that would provide tax breaks for utilities that participate. That’s a start. But, at best, oil recovery will be able to absorb only one-sixth of the country’s annual carbon-dioxide emissions.

To address global warming, the country needs new technology and more ambitious projects. There is little chance that industry will invest in them unless Congress provides far stronger financial incentives.

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Related

Times Topic: Global Warming
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/globalwarming/index.html

Related in Opinion

Op-Ed Contributor: Sizzle Factor for a Restless Climate (July 20, 2011)
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/20/opinion/20cullen.html

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