She then profiles a $100 million CCS pilot project in Spremberg, Germany operated by Vattenfall. It is located adjacent to a what Thompson calls a “dirty coal plant.” The pilot project apparently captures 95 percent of its CO2 emissions and stores the liquefied CO2 in giant tanks — before it is trucked 200 miles away and pumped underground.

Thompson then notes that “this process could increase electric rates by 50 percent.”

And the icing on the cake? A German environmentalist calling the burning of coal without CCS a “crime against the climate.”

I could scarcely have said it better myself. Now, I don’t agree with everything in this story and anything that suggests that clean coal is even close to being ready on the scale or at the cost needed to make it a reality is misleading. Still, it is stunning to see an accurate and honest assessment of what our continued reliance on coal would mean: a crime against the climate. And clean coal? A 50 percent increase in electricity rates.

So — should America rely on a ruinously expensive, Rube Goldbergian technology that won’t be ready for years (decades?) or put our money and our mouths into the cheap, truly clean, safe, and readily available clean energy technologies we already have?

Geotec, Inc. (PINKSHEETS: GETC) announced today that it has filed patent applications with the United States Patent Office. Acknowledgment, as patent pending, has been received by the USPO for “Methods of refining hydrocarbons fuels and post-combustion production by enzyme and protein reactions.” (Application number 61/132,397)

The patent applications included the protein and enzyme processing, cleaning and purification of pre-combustion solid, liquid, and gas hydrocarbons. The patent application also included the lowering of metals, mercury, sulfur and other hydrocarbon contaminants that will decrease the air emissions of Nitrogen Oxides (NOx), Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and Sulfur Dioxides (SO2) and fine particles. These patents describe the bio-refining process for bio-diesel/jet fuel and marine bio-diesel.

The Geotec intellectual property and enzyme/protein patents cover several cellulosic enzymes to convert waste farm products (corn stalks/cobs, rice husks, etc.) to ethanol/methanol for inclusion in “GeoRich Bio-Fuels.” The “GeoRich” family of bio-friendly fuels will be used to operate the company’s mining, bio-refining facilities and product delivery with bio-diesel/jet fuel and marine bio-diesel.

The transesterification of ethanol into bio-fuels and bio-crude, environmental remediation, preliminary stages of carbon sequestration (pre-combustion) and its process to decontaminate gases containing impurities are part of the patent application.

The protein/enzyme chemical sequestration and control of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxides, nitrogen oxides, metals, and other contaminates from the post-combustion of solid, liquid and gas forms of hydrocarbons are part of the patent applications.