1. SEQUESTRATION:
Water shortages could doom carbon capture for coal plants in thirsty West

One approach to help stem the increase of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere is to capture it at the source and inject it into an underground formation. Courtesy of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Wyoming's vast coal reserves pose an irresistible temptation to the coal industry, but its quest for a launching pad for carbon storage may face a critical challenge in a state that is rich in hydrocarbons but short on another key element for "clean coal" technologies: water.

The average 500-megawatt coal-fired plant uses more than 12 million gallons of water per hour to cool steam for turbines, but adding carbon-capture technology to a traditional coal plant operation would increase water use by 90 percent.

If all coal plants are required to install carbon-capture facilities, as many congressional Democrats have advocated -- or if the cap-and-trade system backed by President-elect Barack Obama makes unsequestered carbon emissions prohibitively expensive -- the industry could find itself squeezed between climate regulations that prohibit plants from operating without carbon capture and water rights disputes that block the carbon-capture apparatus from coming online.

Nevertheless, Wyoming's coal reserves -- the largest in the nation -- are drawing attention from power plant developers. And while commercial-scale plants are being erected, the state has become a hotbed for sequestration research. Go to story #1