Clean Coal - Hope or Hype? (page 60)

Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs has published a major study on the Realistic Cost of Carbon Capture, finding the likely cost of avoided carbon to be $150/tonne, and the resulting cost of “clean coal” electricity to be 20 cents kWh, compared to much lower prices for renewables and efficiency. The only way the cost could be reduced was if carbon capture was used for “enhanced oil recovery” in hard-to-extract oil wells - but this would produce as much new CO₂ from the extracted oil as was buried, rendering the exercise pointless.

Source: Climate Progress, 2009

A study from the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies warned of dramatic unintended environmental consequences that could result from storing large quantities of CO₂ in the Earth’s mantel, including water contamination and unexpected leakage. It noted that coal-plants using the CCS process would require 25-33% more water.

Source: New York Times, October 2009