Possibly interesting article brought to my attention: Dirty Coal, Clean Future - Magazine - The Atlantic it offers some ideas about how coal-combustion CO2 may be handled over the coming years and decades by the two elephants in the room. Namely China and the USA.
The base facts were well presented. The author's viewpoint is questionable. Specifically, he laments the US being behind China in exploring innovative ways to capture and store CO2. This is because the US is not building many new coal plants and China is very much building coal plants. But we want the US to transition to building fewer and fewer coal plants! Right now economics is: 1) Making more and more folks explore reducing electric costs 2) Making financing big power plants, especially nuclear, prohibitive 3) Making financing wind and solar plants much more attractive since the fuel cost is smaller, pollution requirements less demanding, and much quicker to build. I'm not too focused on the politics of big power plants. I certainly was not focused on the "politics" of buying a Prius, but LONG TERM economics. If I have investment money for power plant research, I would not waste a cent on how to better control or eliminate the pollution. I would spend it on power plants that have very high ROI. The high ROI is on local, pollution free, quickly built, and reliable plants. That's what is actually happening.
