The Energy Department, the International Energy Agency, and possibly other agencies are making plans to announce in November an effort "to give new momentum" to carbon capture technology, Fatih Birol, IEA executive director, told me last week.
Why that matters: Fossil fuels accounted for 81% of the world's energy consumption in 1987. Thirty years later, it's still 81%.
This data point, shared with me by the IEA chief during an interview last week in Washington, shows why technology making fossil fuels cleaner is desperately needed to address climate change. Coal, oil, and natural gas aren't going anywhere, no matter the strides the world makes in renewables and other energy sources.
What's the problem: The technology at issue, which captures and stores carbon from fossil fuels instead of emitting it into the air, is too expensive and the obstacles to making it cheaper aren't going away. In some cases they're getting bigger, because of cheap oil and natural gas, technical snafus, and high-profile flops like the recent $7 billion failure of a Southern Company project that would have captured emissions from a coal power plant.
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