PRINCETON, N.J. & TOKYO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul. 15, 2014-- NRG Energy, Inc. (NYSE:NRG), through its wholly owned subsidiary Petra Nova Holdings LLC, has formed a 50/50 joint venture (together, the Company) with JX Nippon Oil & Gas Exploration Corporation (JX Nippon), through its wholly owned subsidiary JX Nippon Oil Exploration (EOR) Limited, to build and operate the Petra Nova Carbon Capture Project (the Project).

(Reuters) - According to the popular narrative, coal is locked in a fight to the death with natural gas and renewables to supply clean electrical energy.

Promoters of gas, wind and solar often talk about coal as if it were not just a rival but an enemy. Environmental campaigners want to phase out coal-fired power plants and leave most of the world’s coal reserves below ground.

In November 2010, three combatants gathered in a sleek office here to build a carbon-emissions policy that they hoped to sell to the Obama administration.

One was a lawyer who had been wielding the Clean Air Act since his days at the University of California, Berkeley. Another had turned to practicing environmental law and writing federal regulations to curb pollution after spending a summer on a pristine island off Nova Scotia.

As discussed in a previous post, CCS is likely to play a very important role if climate science is eventually proven correct and long-term atmospheric CO2 concentration levels of ~450 ppm are confirmed as a top global priority. The possible role of CCS retrofits to the very young fleet of fossil-fueled industry currently being built in the developing world was discussed as a medium-term possibility in the case where CO2 prices rise very rapidly in the next decade.

Although touted by proponents as a flexible and achievable way to curb carbon emissions, recently proposed federal power plant emission standards are merely a de facto attempt transform America's energy usage away from coal, the Pennsylvania Coal Alliance said today.

Alliance CEO John Pippy, testifying before the state Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, said the standards would have a disproportionate, negative impact on jobs and the economy in energy-producing states such as Pennsylvania.

The Brookings Institute has released a report that criticizes the benefits that EPA claims are associated with its proposed new greenhouse gas rule. The report authors note that by cherry-picking claimed world wide benefits of climate change mitigation efforts and ignoring certain world wide costs associated with climate change abatement, EPA has effectively gotten around the need to report actual costs of their new proposed rule for existing CO2 sources.

In the previous two parts of this series (1, 2), we discussed why CCS is likely to do very well in a future climate constrained world and how CCS might behave in a policy environment of rapid reactive decarbonization through a high and rising CO2 price. In this third installment, we will take a look at the primary reason why we need CCS in the first place: coal.