What's a carbon-capturing cement-making process worth?
As much as General Electric's entire power plant business, high-profile green investor Vinod Khosla - a big backer of green cement startup Calera - said Tuesday at the AlwaysOn GoingGreen conference in Sausalito.
Of course, that's if you believe that catching carbon dioxide in cement offers "the only viable solution to carbon sequestration," as Khosla said he views the market.
That's a pretty substantial claim, given the billions of dollars now being directed at ways to capture and store carbon from coal-fired power plants and other sources. Granted, no such technologies now exist at commercial scale (see Carbon Capture: Possible Solutions, Part III and Duke Leaves Clean Coal Group).
It's also based on the idea that Calera's technology does in fact capture carbon, a claim that has been disputed (see More Clues in Calera Cement Controversy).
But Khosla is bullish on the technology.
"It allows you to go back to the dirtiest and cheapest coal plants being built in India and China," as well as existing plants, he said. "The climate change impacts can be huge, and the economics of it are such[...]

[Published in GreenNews - Read the original article]