First build nuclear power plants to eliminate much carbon release. If coal burners were subject to the cost of CO2 capture and storage, the price of electricity would increase far beyond the price of power from the most expensive nuclear reactor ever built. There might come a time when nuclear power is used to capture CO2 from the air or other sources and convert it to zero net carbon liquid fuels for use in plug in hybrids.

Pebble bed reactors can produce a high enough temperature to release CO2 from limestone, and the lime residue can then pick up more CO2 from the air in an endless cycle.

There are ways of combusting carbon fuels so that the CO2 is automatically captured as a liquid. This can then be used to extract more oil from oil fields. There are rock formations that will chemically combine with CO2 and bind it forever.

Amost all of the CO2 in oil, coal beds and limestone beds was once in the air. In fact, some scientists say that there was little or no oxygen in the air at one time, but that plants have contaminated the whole atmosphere with oxygen that was deletrious to most forms of life at that time. Who are we to say that the earth is a better place with low levels of CO2 and high levels of O2.

All people, and other life forms, must always have ingested radio-active potassium in order to live. All live creatures have always had their own built in radio-activity and exposed others to it. Both the earth and the universe have always, naturally, exposed life forms to even more radio-activity.

The fear of nuclear power is based on non scientific beliefs, bad arithmetic, no understanding that life is always dangerous and cannot be made safe or even much safer and the failure to realize that dangers must be balanced in all cases. We ignore the real dangers of bio-diseases in most parts of the world and eliminate lead from play items. ..HG..

@Henry Gibson:
I agree that nuclear energy has a role to play in the energy infrastructure, but think that this & other inventions will still be important. For ex: Similar discoveries could lead to a cost-effective method to separate CO2 from the air !

I think this is a really interesting discovery. Reversible binding of CO2 enables low CO2 recovery costs. The only spanner in the works seems to be the "mass transfer-limited dissolution of CO2, in and out of the liquid". I wonder how the relevant mass transfer coefficients compare to say, CO2 in ethanol amines or CO2 in ionic liquids. IMO, this is a critical factor in determining the rates of CO2 capture. (Reversibility, from thermodynamics tells us how much energy is necessary to recover CO2, whereas the rates tell us how fast we can recover CO2.)

BTW, Phil Jessop (who pioneered the "switchable solvents" idea & Lam Phan (his grad student)) are @ Dept. Chemistry, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada.
Disclaimer: I am not related to either of these authors.

While we so focused on capture of CO2 and sequestration and that for many reasons this is a desirable aim, It does also encourage us to believe that we can keep on mining the stuff in the first place.
We have available ways of energy production and application that suggest that along with better understanding of needs, the required adjustment to energy usage are possible and a far more realistic option.

Henry you forget that many people are scared of nuclear power because because they saw what happened in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, living through the cold war and the ongoing proliferation development of these nuclear devices.
We are constantly reminded of failures to deliver the "safe" promise.
But Henry while we wear rose coloured glasses, and make justification for undesirable outcomes even when we believe the outcomes as least worst, we will never understand that many conscientious and aware people are right to be sceptical.

@ Henry,
"Who are we to say that earth is a better place with low levels of CO2 and high levels of O2?"

That is an incredibly stupid comment as even an elementary school student could tell you that every human in the world that likes their life (minus you) thinks high O2 levels are a whole lot better than low levels, as we wouldn't exist on earth without them.

"Combusting carbon fuels so that CO2 is automatically captured in liquid form?"
The critical temperature for carbon dioxide is 88°F (31°C). That means that no amount of pressure applied to a sample of carbon dioxide gas at or above 88°F will cause the gas to liquefy. At or below that temperature, however, the gas can be liquefied provided sufficient pressure is applied. The corresponding critical pressure for carbon dioxide at 88°F is 72.9 atmospheres. In other words, the application of a pressure of 72.9 atmospheres (ie >1000 psi) on a sample of carbon dioxide gas at 88°F will cause the gas to liquefy.

Basically the above text shows that it is possible to produce liquid CO2 at ambient temperatures, but a lot of compression (electricity or natural gas driven) is needed and more importantly this only discusses pure CO2, not combustion exhausts which contain 10-15% CO2 and the bulk as nitrogen (which won't liquefy unless at -233°F. So ultimately Henry's point is wrong because current combustion processes would require nitrogen removal (and other compounds) from the exhaust before CO2 could be liquefied. The oxy-fuel combustion process could remedy that and various gasification processes would decrease the amount of separation required, but at significant cost, and even then you would have very high compression costs and high costs to ensure permanence of the injected CO2 etc.