Yesterday The Atlantic’s James Fallows (an Understanding Government board member) took a look at the energy initiatives agreed to this week by Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao. Absent an overall plan to cap carbon (combined, U.S. and China are responsible for 40 percent of the world’s carbon emissions), the country’s focused on experimentation with various clean energy technologies. One is FutureGen — a “clean coal” power plant slated for construction in Mattoon, Illinois that I’ve reported on. A fact sheet by the Obama administration asserts that the development of clean coal “will open new markets for U.S. businesses and workers.”

But even if coal scrubbed of its Co2 is legit, it is far too expensive to be economically competitive in an unregulated market. Fallows wonders which of the many initiatives the U.S. and China rolled out are a plausible part of a new energy policy. I would argue that even the coolest clean energy technology isn’t plausible until there are stern penalties on carbon emissions. The problem isn’t that it’s a struggle to scientifically create and manufacture energy alternatives. It that’s there is no U.S. or global policy that gives incentives to use these new energy sources.

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