Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Cost of carbon capture


I insist that this blog be politics-free, so I offer this next comment as a news item, not as part of my personal opinions.

The Ohio River is lined with several dozen coal-fired power plants. The region gets almost all of its electricity from coal. AEP, which owns the Mountaineer plant at New Haven, W.Va., has installed a carbon storage and capture system to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide coming out of its stack or stacks.

The head of AEP tells the Wall Street Journal that carbon capture can reduce carbon dioxide emissions to near zero. The impact on consumers will be a doubling of their electric bills, minus whatever subsidies the company receives. And the company will be aggressive in going after those subsidies.

The story is here.