For years, scientists and others concerned about climate change have been talking about the need for carbon capture and sequestration.
That is the term for removing carbon dioxide from, say, a coal-burning power plant’s smokestack and pumping it deep underground to keep it out of the atmosphere, where it would otherwise contribute to global warming.
C.C.S., as the process is known, has had a spotty record so far. While there are some projects being designed or under construction, only one power plant, in Canada, currently captures and stores carbon on a commercial scale (and it has been having problems). Keeping a lot of CO2 out of the atmosphere would require a costly expansion of the technology to many more power plants and other industrial facilities.
