IF WE are going to carry on burning coal – our cheapest, most available, most abundant and most polluting fossil fuel – we urgently need to capture carbon emissions from coal-fired plants and bury them out of harm’s way. So it is deeply worrying that the US, which has more coal than any other nation, last week cancelled its most ambitious plan to bring this technology to market.
Just before Christmas, Mattoon in Illinois was selected as the site for the first large-scale demonstration project for carbon capture and storage (CCS). Now US energy secretary Samuel Bodman has pulled the plug …
