We’re an energy-hungry society, no doubt about it. With the increasing attention paid to global warming, the pressure to curb greenhouse gas emissions grows. How to accomplish this, however, remains a huge bone of contention.

The United States alone burns and consumes the highest amount of fossil fuels in the world. And China, which it was announced this week is set to overtake the U.S. as the world’s biggest source of greenhouse gases this year (the country releases about 5 billion tons of CO2 a year), is taking a long, hard look at how it can reduce emissions.

Proposed methods for reducing greenhouse gases typically fall into two groups: organizational and technical.

Among the former, a recent Supreme Court decision is more organizational than technical. The Supreme Court stood up for the environment in two major court rulings on April 2: one gives the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the go-ahead to regulate greenhouse gas emissions; and the second ruling sends a rebuke to the owners of dirty coal-fired power plants, as NPR reports.

The dirty black stuff is responsible for about 50 percent of all electricity produced in the U.S.

About seven years ago, researchers considered using algae and photosynthesis as a way to tie up carbon from carbon dioxide emitted at coal-burning utilities, i.e., for CO2 sequestration.

Today a technology using heat and pressure may help reduce greenhouse gases from escaping into our atmosphere. The proponents of this technology, as reported by Forbes, claim the technology called K-Fuel cuts the following:

• Mercury content by as much as 70 percent;
• Nitrous oxides by 10 percent to 20 percent; and
• Carbon dioxide emission by 8 percent to 12 percent.

Evergreen, the company responsible for offering K-Fuel, has made a deal with a utility to test this process. But, according to Forbes, environmental groups are skeptical. A scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council believes that there are no reduced emissions, as emission also occurs during the drying phase of processing coal into K-fuel. Evergreen’s chief executive counters that there are fewer emissions because part of the process involves pressure.

Some academics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have their own thoughts on optimum technologies, as published at MIT News and based on a recent report entitled “The Future of Coal – Options for Carbon Constrained World”:

Led by co-chairs John Deutch, Institute Professor, Department of Chemistry, and Ernest J. Moniz, Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems, the report states that carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is the critical enabling technology to help reduce carbon dioxide emissions significantly while also allowing coal to meet the world’s pressing energy needs.

It seems using algae and photosynthesis could be considered sequestering.

Some technological advances have been impressive. For example, “about 98 percent of sulfur can now be removed from emissions, according to Gordon Couch, a technologist with the International Energy Agency’s Clean Coal Centre in London, as previously mentioned on IMT (See: Dirtiest Fossil Fuel the Future’s Cleanest?).

“An aggressive R&D effort in the near term will yield significant dividends down the road and should be undertaken immediately to help meet this urgent scientific challenge,” says MIT’s Moniz. In addition, “a significant charge on carbon emissions is needed in the relatively near term to increase the economic attractiveness of new technologies that avoid carbon emissions and specifically lead to large-scale CSS in the coming decades,” according to MIT.

“It is also not known what – if any – type of limit Congress will place on carbon dioxide emissions,” Forbes reports, going on to add, “Mark Brownstein, managing director of business partnerships at Environmental Defense, says this is where lawmakers’ focus should be. ‘The point is, once you have a carbon dioxide cap in place, the marketplace will have an outcome,’ he says.”

While several companies are exploring relatively long-term ways to make coal cleaner and limit greenhouse emissions, hardly anyone is able to offer an instant solution.

If the politicians cannot generate the energy to deal with this challenge, perhaps they deserve to be replaced.