Clean coal?

I don't know if clean coal is an achievable goal, but given how much of it we have, it's definitely worth researching. Right now burning coal is one of the key sources of the greenhouse gases that are causing climate change.

The government was working on a public-private partnership to build a model clean coal power plant until George W. Bush abruptly canceled it in December, 2007, citing cost increases. However, the Washington Post reports:

The Bush administration's decision to halt production of an experimental power plant that would capture and store carbon dioxide emissions underground may have set back "clean coal" technology in the United States by as much as a decade, according to a congressional report released at a hearing yesterday.

Also, cost estimates used as justification for killing the commercial-scale project known as FutureGen were grossly exaggerated because Energy Department officials did not account for inflation, according to a Government Accountability Office report, also released yesterday....

The Bush administration killed plans to build the plant in December 2007, just hours after Mattoon [Illinois] was chosen over two sites in Texas, triggering allegations that the move was political.