The coal lobby wants us to believe that coal can be a "clean" source of energy. By "clean" the coal lobby means they are optimistic that they will be able to effectively sequester co2 and other harmful emissions from coal-powered plants. Given that the U.S. has the largest reserves of coal in the world, it would seem that CCS technology offers the best hope for a cheap, secure, and clean energy future for the U.S.

Unfortunately, this is all propoganda. While the Gore sponsored commercials by the Coen brothers raise awareness about CCS propoganda, they don't provide people with the compelling arguments that can be directed at those spreading the propoganda. Andrew Nikiforuk in his 2008 book, Tar Sands, does a good job of assembling the arguments. He is the main source I used for this critique. Here are the arguments against:

• The cost of capturing carbon is prohibitively high; between $25 and $115 a ton. Most CCS pilot projects have failed for lack of money. Two billion dollars was sunk into one U.S. project before the plug was pulled.
• Capture and storage of carbon can eat up nearly 30 percent of energy provided which drives the need to mine and burn more coal to compensate.
• A CCS-enabled power plant will raise the cost of electricity production by 37-91 percent. So much for cheap energy.
• Renewable energy infrastructure could be developed faster and at less expense than a CCS-enabled energy infrastructure.
• CCS is largely untested technology. Promoters are just being overly optimistic about its potential given the lack of real data on its feasability. Consider that to really test the viability of CCS would require actually sequestering carbon in some geologic formation and waiting a few thousand years to find out the fate of the stored carbon. An article in the most recent issue of Nature suggests that most of the stored carbon ends up dissolving in water in underground storage formations. No one knows whether this water will, in the fullness of time, carry the dissolved co2 out of these formations. Many geological formations are unique so generalizing from one project to the next is also frought with uncertainty.
• To compress, transport, and store just 15 percent of the world's carbon would be a geo-enginnering feat of such magnitude that even a projected date of achiving this by 2050 is optimistic. Just to transport it would likely require as much pipeline as already exists for transporting crude oil.
• There are safey concerns. In the tar sands, many of the places where they want to bury it are on a landscape perforated by around 350,000 oil and gas wells. These drill holes provide a potential escape route for stored carbon. Heavy co2 leaks can be extremely dangerous and difficult to deal with. Anyone nearby heavy co2 leak will die for lack of oxygen in the air and motorized equipment won't operate in such an environment unless fed with an artificial supply of oxygen.
• A slow leak of 0.1 percent a year over time would empty the storage site in less than 6 thousand years.
• CCS extends the pretense that coal is not dirty and that we can proceed with business as usual.