Ken Caldeira

Global Warming Expert: $800 Billion a Year for Carbon Capture

If you thought doing your part in waging the war against global warming was as simple as attending one of Al Gore’s mid-summer “Live Earth” concerts, think again.

One of the authors of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Carbon Capture and Storage, Dr. Ken Caldeira, said on September 5 at the annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists there “would be an annual expense of perhaps $800 billion to capture carbon from centralized power plant,” as reported by Bud Ward, editor of The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media.

Caldeira said his 2005 IPCC Report estimated a cost of about $100 per ton of carbon (not just carbon dioxide) for carbon capture and storage costs in ideal locations.