“Eliminating fossil fuels and replacing them with nonfossil fuels is a complex issue. The Biden administration’s latest rules on coal require power companies to cut pollution from coal plants, and this will cause some power plants to shut down. But at the same time, electricity demand is projected to rise, so ruling on one issue doesn’t solve the bigger problems associated with supplying energy to meet demand. By itself, coal is a very valuable resource: It has the highest intensity of carbon that can be used to fabricate graphite electrodes for batteries, or nanotubes that can be functionalized for different uses. But when coal is combusted, it contributes to climate change, so we need technologies for coal that don’t go through the high temperature combustion route.

“I believe our overall goal should be to reduce the environmental impact of fossil fuel use. How do we extract those fuels with the minimum environmental impact? How do we capture CO2 in a cost-effective way and effectively sequester it? These are important issues no matter which administration is in power, and I am pretty sure that by the time the Biden administration rules fully take hold, we will have technologies in place that will make CO2 sequestration and capture a lot more economical.

“Here at Penn State, we are working on new ways to safely inject large volumes of CO2 into rocks—some types are more amenable to geochemical reactions—and permanently sequester it there. We’re also looking at ways to use the sequestered CO2 to mobilize critical minerals that are necessary for batteries and renewable energy production.”