MIT’s Technology Review notes that “MIT scientists call on the U.S. government to spend half a billion dollars on projects to capture carbon dioxide from coal. Why think so small?

Why Indeed?

Writer David Duncan continues, “Last week, an MIT report called for $500 million in U.S. government subsidies to support promising new technologies that might reduce the emissions from coal-burning power plants. (See “The Precarious Future of Coal.”) Worldwide, coal plants burn 5.4 billion tons of coal a year, accounting for a third of our planet’s carbon-dioxide emissions. As a result of coal’s cheapness and abundance, a frenzy of new plants are being built around the world.

“The report assesses ideas to capture and bury carbon dioxide as one solution to helping reduce greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. MIT scientists conclude that the science needs time and money to mature, although other, more gung-ho experts in the field believe that solutions are close at hand. Whichever view is correct, $500 million is way too little. What’s needed is for someone (perhaps a presidential candidate?) to launch a plan, equivalent in scale to the Human Genome Project of the 1990s or John F. Kennedy’s pledge in the early 1960s to put a man on the Moon by the end of that decade.”

Ohio’s Governor has placed a heavy emphasis on the need to develop energy alternatives. As a state with deep ties to coal, this would seem to be exactly the kind of project in which the state of Ohio should not only get engaged, but also lead. Click here to read the rest of David’s report.