Carbon Storage Still a Decade Away, Expert Says

MORGANTOWN--A $3.4 billion chunk of this month's federal stimulus package boosts carbon capture and storage research, but the technology some hope will clean coal's greenhouse gas emissions remains far in the future.

"Certainly the money is moving us in the right direction--it may provide a little more push to the accelerator," said John Grasser, communications director at the federal Department of Energy's Office of Fossil Energy.

Still, "the time frame for widespread commercial availability of these technologies--so a utility, if they're building a power plant, could incorporate this as off-the-shelf technology--we're using the time frame of roughly 2020 to 2025," Grasser said. "So we're about 10 to 15 years away."

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies now under study are expected to play an important role in West Virginia's economic future.

CCS already is used in a different, smaller-scale application: Carbon dioxide, one of the greenhouse gases emitted when coal and other fossil fuels are burned, is injected into an oil reservoir, pushing out and taking the place of the oil.