Nubuo Tanaka, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency, has been publicly backing coal-based energy and carbon capture and storage. In a recent Sydney Morning Herald article, Mr. Tanaka stated that the technologies for carbon capture — using algae and chemicals — were already quite good and improvements in technologies were bringing prices down rapidly. He continued by noting that carbon storage technologies were the next area requiring research and study and that legal frameworks guiding the implementation of carbon storage needed to be developed.

Tanaka’s outlook on both the use of coal and the future of CCS was upbeat.

A soon-to-be-published IEA study calls for $10 trillion in new spending on renewable energy and carbon reduction technologies “to limit the rise in the Earth’s temperature.” According to the study, total expected spending will need to top $500 billion per year, over the upcoming 20 years.

This Wall Street Journal note suggests that current spending is approximately $100 billion per year and that this new IEA estimate is a 37% increase from last year’s estimate. Not surprisingly, the study suggests that developed countries, such as the U.S. and Germany, will need to shoulder the largest portion of these expenses.