Chu: We Need Clean Coal, Carbon Capture. Not Really a Reversal

Steve Chu, the likely next Secretary of Energy for the U.S., told a Senate committee that the country needed to invest in clean coal as well as carbon capture.

Chu has always been an outspoken opponent of coal. However, he’s also tempered that with the fact that it is the world’s most abundant form of fossil fuel, that it is cheap, and that some of the world’s largest deposits are in China and India.

He said he is “hopeful and optimistic” that clean coal can be developed, according to a post in the Wall Street Journal’s Environmental Capital blog.

“If confirmed, I will work very hard to extensively develop� clean-coal technology, he said, according to the blog. “Even if we turn off coal, China and India will not.�

Is it a reversal to accommodate the incoming President, who hails from a coal state? While some are trying to claim it is, it seems to be consistent with previous statements from Chu. He’s a relevant portion from an 2006 interview I did with Chu. He’s not wild about coal, but says carbon capture and clean coal may have to be pursued until the solar industry becomes widespread.

How about nuclear? We’ve had it for a long time, but is it politically just too much of a lightning rod?
Chu: I hope that coal becomes more of the lightning rod. It should be. If you think about coal, it’s really scary because it’s our most abundant natural energy resource. And the countries that have the most are the most energy-consuming countries, namely us, China and then Russia in that order. It has sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide and mercury pollution problems. In China, it’s killing their people, its killing their infrastructure. And people die from mining it, so it’s not a good energy source. We don’t yet have proven technology to turn it into a clean burning fuel and capture the carbon dioxide and sequester it. We need to do a lot of research on that to make it economically feasible to do all that.

Is there much hope there? I’ve seen a few venture capital firms invest in clean-coal ideas, and a couple of companies, like BP, have sequestration projects going on.
Chu: Boy, it might have to be at least in the interim until we can get photovoltaic cells down by an order of magnitude or until we get the biomass up and running. We are going to have to have to do something in the next 50 years. The world will increasingly turn to coal and possibly nuclear. Even if you can sequester only for a few hundred years, it will buy time.