Drax power station near Selby, Yorkshire. Photograph: John Giles/PA
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a tantalising way to reduce the climate impact of fossil fuels. At best, it can remove 90% of the CO2 from burning coal, oil or natural gas and store it safely underground instead of letting it drift into the atmosphere and contribute to global warming.
This is important when the International Energy Agency predicts that energy use will increase 50% by 2030 and that most of it, 77%, will be sourced from fossil fuels. Much of that increase will come from the increasing use of coal in the developing world to propel economic growth and raise standards of living. But there are also new coal-fired power stations planned in the UK and US.
The technology for CCS has been demonstrated in bits for decades - everything you need to capture, transport and bury gases is done almost every day by oil companies and chemical engineering plants the world over. But, as yet, no one has plugged the chain together and attached it to a power station with the intent of trapping greenhouse gases.
At the Mountaineer plant in West Virginia, this chain will be assembled early next year but the project is small scale (it will trap 100,000 tonnes of CO2 per year, the equivalent of a 20MW power station).
But there are several full-scale demonstration projects in the pipeline for the first half of next decade, some with funding from governments - the EU has set itself a target of building 12 demonstrations by 2015.
Industry experts know that whoever has to build the world's first CCS demonstration plant will need to pay a fortune - perhaps several billion pounds. Those that follow can learn from the mistakes of the first plant, so their bills could be correspondingly lower. Therefore, power companies are keen that governments share the risk of the CCS technology with them.
In addition, strapping CCS kit to a power station means reducing the efficiency of your turbines. The electricity that comes out is more expensive and power companies complain that it could never compete on the open market.
The question over how quickly CCS is implemented across the globe will depend on how governments and power companies resolve the money problem. There are several suggestions on the table: direct grants for CCS demonstration projects (such as the British government's competition, announced last year) or some sort of market-based incentives (being considered by the EU). Another option is to use the income from the auction of pollution permits from phase 3 of the EU emissions trading scheme. This could raise €30bn (£24bn) per year, some of which could be used to fund demonstrations.
Whatever the answer is, politicians and energy companies need to come to it soon - last year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said that we had to peak global emissions in 2015 if we are to stand a chance of avoiding average global temperature rises of more than 2C and therefore avoid dangerous climate change. Relations between the enablers of CCS technology are getting frosty as both sides operate a "who'll blink first" strategy. Meanwhile the Earth continues warming.
