Carbon Sequestration-An Expensive Boondoggle

Mark Udall has introduced a very expensive bill directing the Secretary of Energy to conduct research on the long term "burial" of carbon dioxide. The cost of the bill, $420 million a year over four years suggests that even after the research is done, using the technology would be both expensive and dangerous. Insurance companies want no part of this project, so the cost of the bill is under stated.

If the amount being considered for this research were reasonable, which it is not, this might be an appropriate use of federal funds and research facilities like Los Alamos.

We can't help but note that nature already provides a natural mechanism for long term sequestration of carbon. It is called "trees." Of course, they only store carbon while they are alive. Of late, there hasn't been a lot of interest from either Mark Udall or the environmental community in keeping our forests either alive or healthy.

One wonders how many nuclear power plants could be sited and started for the same $1.7 billion that Udall wants to spend on this boondoggle. The last we heard, nuclear power plants put out no CO2. Does Udall consider nuclear power a solution? Not at all.

Not long ago, Udall was hyping his bill to thin forests around Colorado mountain towns. The piker could only allocate $22 million a year for that project. It is becoming more and more clear that Mark Udall's priorities are driven by Washington based lobbies and not the needs of Colorado.