By Nathan Bernier, KUT News
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-922533.mp3
Dallas, TX – The U-S Department of Energy announced more than half-a-billion dollars in funding today for so-called "clean coal" projects across the country. As KUT's Nathan Bernier reports, a sizeable chunk of that cash will land right here in our backyard.
Carbon capture and storage is a very popular and increasingly well-funded branch of energy research. The U-S Department of Energy already committed 4-billion dollars to it - and in a conference call with reporters, Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced more money for Texas in the form of stimulus funds.
Chu: "The University of Texas at Austin is going to be receiving $5 million to evaluate carbon storage opportunities in geologic formations."
What does that mean? We asked Dr. Tip Meckel. He's the one leading that project at UT Austin.
Meckel: "The idea is to capture emissions that are currently vented to the atmosphere, and then store them securely deep underground."
And he says doing it underneath the seabed of the Gulf of Mexico makes sense because many of sources of those emissions are located near the coast - refineries for example. Of course, the Energy Department is doing this in the interests of advancing the clean coal project. It was a promise of Barack Obama when he was a candidate, and it's a federal policy now that he's president. Some environmentalists, however, question whether it offers the best return on investment.
Reed: "My thoughts are that the terminology is incorrect, that to say, 'clean coal' implies that coal is clean when it's not."
Cyrus Reed is with the Lonestar Chapter of the Sierra Club.
Reed: "We think the real answer is transitioning away from coal towards other sources of energy, but we don't object to some research into new technologies."
Reed says many so-called clean coal projects still produce coal ash - a hazardous waste product. Coal ash will high on the agenda of the Environmental Protection Agency tomorrow. The EPA is conducting a public hearing in Dallas as it debates whether to regulate coal ash in an effort to further contain pollution from coal fueled power plants.