Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is, in its most common form, a technological means of cutting carbon dioxide emissions from smokestacks (coal-fired power plants in particular) by capturing the CO2 and storing it underground. CCS research and development is generally supported and funded by President Obama and the Department of Energy.

Yet, adoption of CCS by coal fired power plants is not yet being widely adopted by coal-power producers, who despite their "clean coal" PR campaign have few intentions of implementing the technology anytime soon. For this reason, we believe law-makers and policy-makers should mandate that some coal-fired power plants deploy CCS technology.

This is appropriate because coal-fired power plants are clearly not going away, they need to be cleaned-up for both climate and health reasons, and because implementing CCS would put a price on carbon from the dirtiest coal-fired sources, thus allowing renewables to compete.

Two mandates are called-for in this petition:

1. All new coal-fired power plants should be required to install carbon capture and storage technology starting in 2015. 

2. Electric utilities should be required to obtain 15% of their electricity from CCS-enabled power plants by the year 2020. (Congress is now considering a Renewable Energy Standard that would require utilities to obtain 15% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2021, so this would be something of a "matching standard" for CCS).