Comments on: U.S. Chamber seeks climate solutions from tech sector, not EPA

In economic recovery proposal unveiled Wednesday, the Chamber of Commerce advocates incentives for clean energy technology as way to solve climate change problems.

[Pete Bardo]

Keep dreaming, Donohue. There's no such thing as clean coal technologies--they're simply piping the polution underground. And how long has it been since we've built a nuclear power plant?

Stick to the chamber....

[desarm24]

Re: Climate change solutions
Several complex methods have been proposed for removing carbon from the atmosphere, but the simplest seems to have been overlooked. This is the old practice of "charcoal burning", in which wood is heated without access of air and converted to charcoal (elemental carbon.) This was once done on a large scale to produce charcoal for smelting iron, and resulted in widespread deforestation in Europe and Britain.
Forestry and agriculture are the only practical means of absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but natural processes eventually return the carbon to the air through burning or decomposition. However, if some fraction of agricultural production is dedicated to carbonization and the resulting carbon is stored, then it is permanently removed from the air. Carbon is inert in the environment and can be stored in innumerable ways. For example, it could be backfilled into worked-out coal mines, dumped in the ocean, or made into industrial products.
Efficient pyrolysis plants would need to be developed, and part of the energy contained in the biomass would have to be used to operate them, but the volatile products of pyrolysis would have industrial value.
Needless to say, more political will would be necessary for such a program than is currently evident.

[Manhattan2]

Solar transfer and the "Energy Manifesto" hold the answers Mr. Donohue seeks.