To Cohen, the persistent China coal push points to the importance of intensifying work on cutting the costs of systems for capturing smokestack carbon dioxide and sequestering it underground...
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...Unfortunately, I don’t share Cohen’s optimism about prospects for the deployment of such systems at a scale the climate would notice, mainly because there’s no incentive for China to pay the additional cost, no sign (unless you can identify one?) that developed countries will be willing to cover the difference and little evidence that the world is serious about a much more ambitious push on large-scale demonstration of integrated systems for capturing and storing CO2.
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...The issue isn’t technology or geology (finding safe storage sites for huge volumes) nearly so much as cost. And remember, this isn’t about the affordability of the technology in the United States or Europe. It’s about the cost of deployment at large scale in the coal-boom countries, China and India.