Amidst all this enclosed article's dreary, non-productive blather about the wasteful concept of Carbon Capture and Storage - i.e., CCS, the costly collection of the potentially-valuable coal-use by-product, Carbon Dioxide, and the expensive pumping of it down geologic storage rat holes, sometimes to the benefit of Big Oil in their pot scraping efforts - are a few "enlightening" facts.
Some excerpts:
"CCS is broken down into four stages: capture (about 50% of the cost), which separates CO2 from other exhaust gases..."
and
"South Africa’s Sasol, and PetroSA synfuels plants are said to be in a prime position for CO2 capture, as they already produce a stream of almost 95% concentrated CO2 through coal-to-liquids processes, bringing down capture costs."
So, coal-to-liquid conversion facilities produce nearly pure, "95% concentrated" Carbon Dioxide as their waste gas stream, thus drastically reducing capture costs - which represent "about 50% of the cost" of "CCS".
Wouldn't it make sense to then send that nearly-pure CO2 to a Sabatier processor, and convert it into Methane, for further processing into valuable Methanol, and thus pay at least for the cost of capturing it in the first place, and obviating the need to spend even more money burying it?
Carbon Capture and Storage, and Cap & Trade, just haven't been thought out, or examined in the true light of Coal-to-Liquid conversion, and Carnol and Sabatier CO2 conversion, technologies.
Carbon Dioxide is a valuable by-product of our coal-use industries. We can make more liquid fuels and other useful chemicals with CO2, and we shouldn't be trying to "landfill" all of it, especially to subsidize Big Oil's squeezing of last drops, or trying to tax the producers of it out of existence.