(Bloomberg) — Gina McCarthy, the head of the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, said the need to reduce carbon
emissions offers a chance to push ahead with low-carbon
technology such as carbon capture and storage.
“In the U.S. even with our Clean Power Plan, every fuel
will still continue to play a part” including coal and gas, she
said at a town hall meeting in Tokyo Wednesday. The Clean Power
Plan, an initiative announced earlier this month, would require
the American power sector to cut carbon pollution 32 percent by
2030 from 2005 levels.
“There’s a tremendous opportunity today to accelerate our
progress on cleaner combustion and carbon capture and storage,”
McCarthy said.
Her remarks came as the U.S. Department of Energy and
China’s National Energy Administration agreed to share their
results as they refine technologies to capture the greenhouse
gases produced from burning coal, according to a report by the
Associated Press late Tuesday, which cited Christopher Smith,
the Energy Department’s assistant secretary for fossil energy.
“Over time, higher levels of capture will be available as
CCS technology advances,” McCarthy said.
McCarthy is in Japan to meet with officials, including
Yoshio Mochizuki, Japan’s environment minister.
CCS is a technology that promises to absorb the pollution
blamed for global warming before it reaches the atmosphere. CCS
is designed to capture and bury the carbon dioxide byproduct
from burning fossil fuels.
To contact the reporter on this story:
Chisaki Watanabe in Tokyo at
cwatanabe5@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Reed Landberg at
landberg@bloomberg.net
Iain Wilson, Indranil Ghosh