According to an expert group of scientists, engineers and architects from the US, the world’s most powerful country could completely halt CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants by 2020.
Writing in the June 2010 edition of the American Chemical Society’s journal ‘Environmental Science & Technology’, a team from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Columbia University, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and 2030 Inc./Architecture 2030 say that elimination of carbon emissions is possible using technologies that exist already or will be commercially available within in decade.
Pushker Kharecha and colleagues say that the only way to preserve the current environment is to “rapidly phase out coal emissions and prohibit emissions from unconventional fossil fuels such as oil shale and tar sands”.
To phase out CO2 emissions from coal, the authors say an end to subsidies for fossil fuels is needed, along with a rising price on carbon emissions.
Simultaneously, a programme to improve the energy efficiency of homes, buildings and appliances is needed, as well as the electricity transmission network itself.
Coal-fired power stations will need to be replaced with biomass, geothermal, wind, solar and third/fourth generation nuclear power plants, while remaining coal plants will have to be fitted with carbon capture and storage technology.
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