While there’s nothing like healthy competition to heat things up, the race to be the world’s first productive carbon sequestration facility may be a dramatic step forward in cooling things down.  Though the United States has several facilities planned, and already pumps a good deal of carbon dioxide into the ground to re-energize fading oil fields, a plant in Germany may be the first to add sequestered power to the grid.

After two years of "furious" work, the 70-million-Euro project is ready to start up next week. However, it will only crank out five megawatts, easily within the power range of the wind turbines that make Germany the most wind-energy reliant country in the world. The high costs of running the plant, as well as confusion over how to evaluate the new technology under the European Union’s system of carbon credits, continue to stymie larger-scale production. 

Still, an operational facility will bring any immediate unforeseen technical issues with sequestration to the fore, and draw the attention of both investors and governments. Given the massive amount of energy potentially stored in the world’s coal beds, this small plant opening is too big to overlook.