In fact, we recently kicked off the America’s Power Factuality Tour—a country-wide road trip in search of the people, places and technologies involved in producing cleaner, domestic electricity from coal.

We started in Wright, Wyo., at the Powder River Basin, which produces more coal than any other site in the U.S. Take the tour for yourself and see our most abundant domestic fuel at work. factuality.org

It’s true that there is no “scrubber” for carbon dioxide as there is for sulfur. However, there is a range of options for regulated entities to reduce emissions. In the case of electricity generators, these include improving plant efficiency, fuel switching, investment in renewable energy, and providing financial incentives to consumers to reduce electricity consumption.

If a cap-and-trade program distributes allowances for free, there are certainly advantages to a tax since the revenue can be used to offset much of the overall cost of the program. However, we have largely moved past the idea of grandfathering allowances, and RGGI set a strong precedent for a Federal cap-and-trade program when most of the 10 participating states made the decision to auction a majority of their allowances. A cap-and-trade program with 100% auction of allowances couples the certainty of emissions reductions with a substantial revenue stream that can be used for a variety of purposes including investment in energy technology.

I suggest as one method to remove the excess CO2 capture by growing algae, converting algae to biochar and deeply burying the (compressed) biochar. I estimate that about $30–60 per tonne of carbon ought to be enough funding; that’s an Excess Caron Dioxide Removal Fee of $110–220 per tonne of carbon dioxide.