Harvesting electricity from carbon dioxide.

• Position: Energy Sources - Brief article

A new method for producing electricity from carbon dioxide could be the start of a classic trash-to-treasure story for the troublesome greenhouse gas, researchers report in Environmental Science & Technology Letters. The method uses C[O.sub.2] from electric power plant and other smokestacks as the raw material for making electricity. This method could produce electricity equal to about 400 times the annual output of the Hoover Dam.

Bert Hamelers and his colleagues at the Netherlands' Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Water Technology explain that electric power-generating stations worldwide release about 12,000,000,000 tons of C[O.sub.2] annually from combustion of coal, oil, and natural gas. Home and commercial heating produces another 11,000,000,000 tons. Smokestack gas from a typical coal-fired plant...