CLIMATE CHANGE:
Fossil Fuels Without CO2 Emissions
E. A. Parson and D. W. Keith
Recent work in carbon management (CM)--the separation and sequestration of carbon from fossil-fuel combustion to reduce atmospheric CO2 emissions--has raised estimates of sequestration capacities and lowered estimates of costs, so that CM may offer substantial abatement possibilities more cheaply than nonfossil energy. CM's seeming technological and economic attractiveness has major implications for the political economy of abatement and the design of abatement policies. CM also carries novel environmental risks and raises serious intergenerational equity issues, which urgently require assessment.
E. A. Parson is at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government. E-mail: Ted_Parson{at}harvard.edu. D. W. Keith is in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge MA 02138, USA.
