Carbon capture tech is no panacea - The Hindu BusinessLine

Its efficacy remains to be proven. Meanwhile, India should stick to phasing down coal, given growth imperatives
India has been publicly labelled the Bad Boy of the COP26 global environment summit. Behind the scenes, China and the US were also on the same side but with Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav reading out the amendment to the final text, it was inevitable that we got branded the recalcitrant backslider.
In Delhi for the last two weeks, we’ve had a permanent pollution haze hanging over the city. So we only have to step out of the house to understand the urgency of climate change. Cleaning up the environment is about the here-and-now. It isn’t about a clean scrub by 2030 or even more distant dates like 2050 or 2060.
Still, we must deal with cold hard reality on the ground. At COP26, the offending phrase that we insisted on changing was about accelerating the “phase-out” of power plants that don’t install what’s called carbon capture technology. India and China fought to have the words “phase down” inserted into the agreement in place of phase-out. That means they will make efforts to use less rather than an absolute commitment to using no energy at all from such power plants.
There’s good reason for India and China to be reluctant about much-hyped carbon capture technology. For a start, it’s barely in its infancy and hasn’t really established a proven track record yet. There are only 20 projects in commercial use worldwide, the International Energy Agency says....



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