Carbon Capture Needs Decade of Subsidy, Harvard Researcher Says

Technology to remove and bury carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants will require at least a decade of government subsidies before becoming economically viable, a Harvard University researcher said.

Start-up costs for carbon-capture and storage, known as CCS, are high enough to “need some kind of subsidies” for 10 or 20 years before the technology can compete with other forms of low-carbon power generation, Mohammed Al-Juaied, a visiting scholar at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, said in a phone interview from Boston.