Europe’s Energy Chief Backs Ambitious Plan for Carbon Capture

The European Energy Commissioner, Andris Piebalgs, has voiced support for a 10 billion euro ($13 billion) plan to help build up to 12 demonstration coal-fired power plants that would store carbon dioxide emissions underground. Two European Union commissioners have proposed the plan, which would be funded from the EU’s Emission Trading Scheme. Under that cap-and-trade plan, which is gradually being phased-in, major emitters of greenhouse gases must eventually purchase permits to discharge carbon dioxide. Piebalgs told a carbon sequestration conference that his agency would send a “positive signal” about the demonstration plants, which are to be built by 2015. Carbon capture and storage still faces major technical challenges, and some environmentalists argue that the world should rapidly switch to alternative energy sources rather than spending large sums of money in pursuit of the illusory goal of “clean coal.”