The U.S. Department of Energy announced today that it will provide $36 million for 15 projects to further the development of new technologies for the capture of carbon dioxide from the existing fleet of coal-fired power plants. Today’s 15 project announcements will focus on five areas of interest for CO2 capture: membranes, solvents, sorbents, oxycombustion, and chemical looping.

“Currently, the existing U.S. coal fleet accounts for over half of all electricity generated in this country,” U.S. Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman said in a release. “The projects announced today will combat climate change and help meet current and future energy needs by curbing CO2 emissions from existing coal-fired plants.”

But carbon capture and sequestration, along with “clean coal” are still perceived by many as mythical technologies that are simply not cost effective.

My question is this: If carbon capture and sequestration is such a central component of President Bush’s broader energy vision, why aren’t they doing more about it? To put things in perspective, since 2001 the Bush administration has invested more than $2.5 billion in clean coal research and development – roughly the same amount it spends per week on the Iraq war.

Oh, and that $36 million figure mentioned at the top of this article? $36 million is roughly equal to what the U.S. spends on the Iraq war in two and a half hours.

Read more about the specific projects receiving funding at the DOE’s website.

Other posts on the DOE and carbon capture/sequestration:

Photo: hAdamsky via flickr under a Creative Commons License