Are hopes for a low-carbon economy fading?

A lot of hope has been placed on developing affordable, scalable technologies that can grab carbon out of the emissions from coal-fired power plants and store it long term to prevent further climate change. As financial concerns continue to weigh heavily on governments on either side of the Atlantic, though, that hope appears to be fading.

Britain’s Guardian newspaper recently reported that a highly touted project to develop carbon capture and storage (CCS) at Scottish Power’s Longannet power station appears all but dead. While nothing’s been announced officially yet, the fatal blow appears to have been delivered when Chancellor George Osborne said the UK would not make any effort to cut carbon emissions faster than its European neighbors.

The development leaves yet another black mark on the current British leadership’s prior pledge to be the “greenest government ever.” It’s also worrisome that the Guardian article concludes by noting that “ministers were now privately questioning renewable power and other schemes that involved substantial public subsidies.”

As we’re seeing in the US, it looks like green-economy ambitions are being stifled through a combination of politics and money … both shrinking reserves in public coffers and financial pressure from old-school energy industries that prefer to keep things as they are.