"No word on whether carbon sequestration could be more cost-effective than other clean-energy sources, which is really the key question here."

The only way to really answer the question is to put it to the test. Mandate lower CO2 emissions for electricity producers and let them determine if sequestration can be commercialized cheaper than shutting down some production and building nuclear or wind plants to make up for the lost production. My predictioon is that sequestration would win hands down.  

"Chu said that efficiency should be the Energy Department's top priority, and that California should be a model, since doing things like conservation and the offloading of energy at peak times was the easiest, cheapest way to forestall the need to build new plants in the first place."

Exactly right. Conservation should be first. California Air Resources Board recently proposed a Low Carbon Fuel Standard whereby fuels would contain 10% less carbon, on a life cycle basis, in 2020 than it does today.

That is harder than it sounds. The Energy and Resources Group at University of California, Berkeley has concluded that all commercially available renewable fuels result in even greater GHG emissions than fossil fuels per unit of energy delivered if land use change is considered. But, improving energy efficiency by 10% should be relatively easilt achievable.  

It's good to see that Obama's appointees do not have extreme, unattainable goals. Gore's call for a total ban on fossil fuels by 2018 is sounding more and more ridiculous. I voted for him but now cosider him to be a buffoon.

r-ennis is certainly right that the market could answer the question, IF the external costs associated with the various technologies are represented in the actual costs to producers.  Free market economies are notoriously bad at doing that, and one could legitimately fear that it won't happen here.   We've never succeeded in making the largely externalized cost of environment damage from coal mining be paid by coal consumers, we have certainly not succeeded in making the environmental costs of CO2 emissions be paid by those who emit the CO2.

I think this is relevant for sequestration, because sequestration is "dump it somewhere" technology, with very little serious analysis done to whether or not the "somewhere" is really a safe long term repository for CO2, or even there are sufficient "somewheres" conveniently located where power plants will be built, to make it work.

Of course everything I say about external costs is true also to some degree of nuclear and other technologies, but to varying degrees.  Nuclear has a huge external cost in waste disposal that has never been properly accounted for.  Wind probably has relatively few externalized costs, but no doubt there are some.  

My point is that in the end the problem of unaccounted for external costs means the market should not be relied upon alone to make these decisions.  

I am pretty skeptical about CO2 sequestration, technically. I've heard some interesting ideas (mainly catalyzing chemical reactions that consume CO2 and produce carbonate-rich minerals that are stable at burial temperatures). Gaseous sequestration seems questionable in general because of leakage, although abandoned natural gas fields should work as reservoirs (you know they are sealed traps), as long as all wells are tightly capped off. Overall, I think it is a difficult problem, which is not an impossible problem, but difficult = expensive.

So calling on the market may be premature. What we don't want is to have a market-oriented push toward inexpensive semi-sequestration "solutions".

But r-ennis is totally right about efficiency. I think a 10% increase in overall efficiency could be attained quite easily. I think 20-30% is attainable given reasonable investment, with lifestyle changes being needed to get to the upper end of that range. And because efficiency saves you money on energy costs, the real cost of reducing emissions through efficiency is partially offset by energy savings.

It's OK to be skeptical about CO2 sequestration and it may be that only the first 10-20% of CO2 removal by sequestration ("semi-sequestration" as JEFF FREY calls it) is economic before other methods of CO2 reduction become the methods of choice. But what's wrong with letting the market decide that?

It should also be remembered that the new CAFE standards will reduce auto CO2 emissions by about 35% by 2018. Furthermore, coal fired power plants can reduce emissions by as much as 15% by installing energy efficient reheat technology. Trouble is, such investments would trigger New Source Review and require installation of expensive pollution control devices to bring the plants up to new source standards. So these plants do not make the investments in energy efficiency and simply tool along wasting energy as well.

The EPA should give up on counter-productive New Source rules and let these old plants invest in energy efficiency, or it should promulgate new rules to make all existing plants comply with new source regulations.  

"But what's wrong with letting the market decide that?"

I think "the market" has proven, repeatedly, that issues of profitability ultimately take priority over every other consideration. Issues like price-fixing and patent-squatting come to mind, but I'm also thinking along the lines of companies pricing the products in such a way as to make the most effective or efficient solutions the least affordable for businesses.

If the CO2 is truly sequestered, then I have no problem with the market deciding on that vs. other strategies. What I am worried about is ineffective sequestration. Without some enforceable way of determining whether any particular method is effective, the market will push people toward cheaper but less effective (or totally ineffective) methods.

Don't worry about ineffective sequestration. The industry understands that there are substantial liability issues associated with inadvertent leakage. This is a prime concern. My son is a litigation attorney with a firm that has many coal and coal power clients who are working on this as we speak.

However, the technical problems imposed for capturing CO2 probably will increase dramatically as the percentage of CO2 captured from a given source increases. The first, say,  10 to 20% may be relatively easy to capture, but more than that may become prohibitively expensive compared with other alternates.

Concerning "issues like price fixing", sure there are crooks in all industries. If you think all developers of alternative energy are squeaky clean, think again. The government has handed out huge amounts of money to ethanol and biodiesel industries, and, probably, to other alternative industries as well. I think these should stop. The government should promulgate standards for CO2 as it has done for SO2, NOx, etc., and let the chips fall where they may.

Is this even a serious discussion?  Coal produces roughly twice the carbon dioxide per unit of energy released as does natural gas.  If you sequester only 20% of the CO2 from coal, it is still dirtier, from a greenhouse gas perspective, than gasoline, fuel oil, or any other crude oil derived fuel.  Clean coal doesn't get to be called a cleaner alterntive fuel until you can effectively sequester more like 80% or the CO2.  Put a significant carbon tax on emissions, and the market will make this VERY apparent.

As for liability: yes, the coal industry has liability  studies and lawyers.  They are largely looking at the potential for CATASTROPHIC releases of CO2 that cause immediate injury, death or property damage.  If you put your carbon underground and the reservoirs leaks anywhere but at the introduction and monitoring pipes, you quickly get into territory where the coal is in nowhere meeting its greenhouse gas "clean" label, but that fact is untraceable.

That said, I completely agree with the sense of r-ennis' last paragraph.  We should immediately stop subsidizing ethanol and biodiesal, which have different but equally damning problems, and promulgate real standards (or better, a real carbon dioxide tax that rises per ton of emissions until any given emmitter meets it targets), and let industry choose based on predictable costs.  I'm willing to bet, they won't choose coal any time soon.

Reality's a real bitch, ain't it?  Banning coal and nuclear power.  HAHAHA.  All the while trying to reduce fossil fuels.  Maybe magic beans will power our cars and lightbulbs.  Honestly, I'd be a little bit more on the side of greenies if they didn't all sound like Luddites.

Chu's been drinking the kool aid for too long.  The memos he got since being nominated probably woke him up to reality.  Much like Obama's going to wake up to the reality of the necessity of Gitmo and actually fighting a war rather than just mouthing off about all that's wrong with the world.

jwl said: "Honestly, I'd be a little bit more on the side of greenies if they didn't all sound like Luddites."

Do you have an argument here, jwl, or just dropped by for a bit of name calling?  If so, you might want to read your history, and get to know some of the people really concerned about global climate change.

First the history: Ned Lud and his followers wrecked machine because they wished to protest or prevent the transformation of society and the loss of their jobs attendant upon industrialization.  The people who are skeptical about clean coal are anything but anti-technology - they're pushing, not trying stall, new technologies.  They just insist that those technologies actually do what they advertise. If you think clean coal does, then make your case (as r-ennis does, e.g.), but don't call the rest of us anti-technology.  

Second the people: The people who are leading the charge against global climate change (Holdren, Chu, Hansen, and a host of other distinguished scientists) caused by CO2, methane and other greenhouse gases understand these issues, including the economic ones, far beyond anything you demonstrate in your blasts here.  They also understand that if a farmer eats his seed corn, he may survive the immediate crisis, only to be doubly screwed next Spring.  That's what happens if we go around letting economic considerations ALWAYS trump environmental ones.  Metaphorically, we eat our seed corn; practically, we risk transforming the earth irreparably in ways that ultimately do more economic damage than drastically transforming the economy ever can.

Consider what happens, for example, if you lower the average rainfall across the Western Mississippi basin by 20%, while raising the average temperature 3 degrees Celsius (a reasonably defensible prediction of what happens with business as usual carbon emmissions): you seriously damage the capacity of one of the most productive agricultural regions on earth, and you can't decide in 2075 that that was a bad idea, and start reducing CO2 emmissions at that point.

sdemuth:

Thanks for the history lesson and I mean it without sarcasm.

However, I have to disagree with you that greenies are the opposite of Luddites because they are pushing for new technology.  That a few may be doing.  However, most greenies are only AGAINST things (Against SUV's, against Google searches, against air travel, against replacing Fossil Fuels with nuclear power) rather than FOR anything.  Look at nuclear power - I mean, if it had been developed today, it's be our silver bullet to solving the energy problem.  And yet, the majority of greenies are against it.  There is no satisfying these people.  Reduce CO2? Oh but there's a risk of radiation.  I'm sure there are many side effects to cold Fusion also, like catastrophic failure wiping out the entire planet.  Fossil Fuels have negative effects.  So does coal.  Wind power is ineffective and ugly, Hydro dams affect the poor beavers.  Solar power is ineffective and the panels are probably toxic.

My point is that these people will never be satisfied until we stop using technology of any sort.  Modern day druids.

jwl: Most people in general are only against things, unless those thing demonstrably benefit them.  Social altruism is an uncommon quality.

So let's personalize this: I am decidedly what most people would call a "greenie."  I have invested in reducing my energy use, growing my own food (or eating locally grown otherwise).  Hell, I even where clothes that were made from fiber raised on my land.  I am also a long term member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and work for what is surely one of the two or three most successful technology companies of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, in technology development.  There are literally (and I use the word correctly) tens of thousands like me in the company.

I am not against clean coal, or nuclear, or any other energy technology.  I am skeptical of carbon sequestration from coal, for what I consider to be very sound scientific, economic and technological reasons; I am less skeptical about a revival of nuclear, but sure would like to see some convincing evidence that we actually have a plan that works for nuclear.  I like wind, doubt solar voltaics make sense, but think thermal solar has enormous promise.  Biofuels so far look like a regression to me.  I'd rather burn gasoline, frankly.

Now, why do I list all those convincements and skepticisms?  Because, I, like everyone else, am particular in my analysis, so if you take a sample of 100 of those like minded people I just mention, and compile what they dislike, distrust or are skeptical about, you'd have a significant number of votes against every energy technology.  The converse is also true though: if you compile all the things they are convinced are good ideas, you get votes for everthing.

But there is a difference: people are far more passionate, and more likely to organize around and speak up about, the things they think are dangerous or disagreeable to them, than they are the things they think are beneficial.  Again, social altruism is not common.  And so, collectively, those "informed greens" ARE against virtually every energy technology in a very noticable way, even though, collectively, they are also in favor of virtually every energy technology, it just isn't that noticeable.

By the way, the same analysis holds for our social likes and dislikes: chances are you more noticeably dislike the "greenies" than you like the measured reasonable people who are not "greenies."