Coal power in a warming world

Source: Union of Concerned Scientists
"CCS is still an emerging technology. It has the potential to substantially reduce CO2 emissions from coal plants, but it also faces many challenges. In its current form the technology would greatly increase the cost of building and running coal plants while greatly reducing their power output. In addition, careful selection and monitoring of geologic storage (or “sequestration”) sites, and the development of regulatory standards and mechanisms to guide this process, will be needed to minimize the environmental risks
associated with CO2 leakage (including groundwater contamination). For CCS to play a major role in reducing CO2 emissions, an enormous new infrastructure must be constructed to capture, process, and transport large quantities of CO2. And although CCS has been the subject of considerable research and analysis, it has yet to be demonstrated in the form of commercial-scale, fully integrated projects at coal-fired power plants. Such demonstration projects are needed to determine the relative cost-effectiveness of CCS compared with other carbon-reducing strategies, and to assess its environmental safety."