No so much coal, persey, but it's not unfeasible to capture the CO2 emitted by burning coal (or whatever) and sequester it in the ground. This should be talked about more because it enables us to use all that energy, but I suggest there might be ugly political connotations around it, much like Nuclear.
I'm not hugely familiar with it, other than I know that it's definitely something under consideration and though not yet feasible , it satisfies the query of the OP, i.e. it's 'an opportunity to make use of carbon fuels with no emissions'
I wish people who'd down vote my comment would reply if there is a factual error or misrepresentation of some kind on my part.
"The reasons that CCS is expected to cause such power price increases are several. Firstly, the increased energy requirements of capturing and compressing CO
2 significantly raises the operating costs of CCS-equipped power plants. In addition, there are added investment and capital costs. The process would increase the fuel requirement of a plant with CCS by about 25% for a coal-fired plant"
This is on top of the new reality that building solar and wind is cheaper than the cost to just operate existing coal plants [1], and therefore far cheaper than building new coal plants or retrofitting old coal plants with expensive (both CapEx and OpEx) CCS systems.
"[The C02 sequestration process steals] up to 30% of the energy produced by a coal-fired power plant, reducing its efficiency and raising its electricity price. Second-generation facilities capture and reuse waste heat, among other things, but their costs are still too high, Brickett says."
I'm aware of all of that, and that it's not feasible 'today', but:
a) Solar was 'not feasible' only 10 years ago, with more innovation and otherwise more expensive prices, it's feasible in some scenarios. There's no reason we can't innovate along other vectors. If the operating costs of solar can be reduced, surely they can with carbon fuel plants as well.
b) My point was specifically regarding burning any carbon fuel, not just coal. Natural Gas is by far the cheapest way to make electricity (depending on how you amortize Hydro I think), so 'Carbon Sequestration' would be a massive opportunity. Why would we ignore it?
c) A '30% cost increase' is actually pretty small considering most other alternatives and issues. In fact, that's good news because most energy schemes are not remotely feasible - if some clean energy scheme were only '30% away from being competitive' we'd be celebrating. If we could save the planet merely by raising electricity costs by 30% that would probably be a viable plan, globally.
d) There are places that exist 'outside the US' - like Canada, where way up north there isn't nearly as much sunlight, and the days are exceedingly short in winter, and this changes the nature of the electricity equation quite a lot and it's not actually feasible, and neither is wind in many places.
e) Carbon fuels burn in a predictable manner, which has all sorts of utility beyond the simple price. Something you can plan for is considerably more valuable than something that's inherently variable, so much so that in many cases the 'variable power' has little utility.
Particularly given there's tons of carbon fuels in the ground, I don't see why people would be against sequestration as long as it actually works.
> Particularly given there's tons of carbon fuels in the ground, I don't see why people would be against sequestration as long as it actually works.
Nobody is against anyone trying, but people are entitled to their doubts. If there were significant potential in CCS, investment dollars would respond accordingly. So far the results haven't gotten anywhere near the value proposition offered by renewables, especially in OpEx. Maybe that will change, maybe it won't.
