Scientists are warning us that as we burn fossil fuels for energy -- coal, oil, and natural gas -- we're overloading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide and changing the Earth's climate, warming it, because CO2 traps heat. Every year, about 30 billion tons of CO2 are released around the globe. Almost half that comes from just one fuel: coal. Here in the United States, coal provides nearly half of our electricity. But China and India rely on coal for up to 80% of their power. Plus, their appetite for energy is growing, so carbon dioxide levels are expected to skyrocket unless nations stop using coal or find ways to eliminate its CO2 emissions.

That's where carbon capture and storage could help. Also known as CCS, it involves trapping carbon dioxide and injecting the gas deep underground. So far, those working on CCS haven't been able to make it profitable. But some researchers think they've found a way to wash the carbon dioxide right out of those coal-fired power plants. Dan Goldstein explains in this "energyNOW!" Spotlight.

[GOLDSTEIN] So, for all the talk about CO2, there just isn't that much to see. So for our purposes here, we'll introduce you to Molly, a molecule of carbon dioxide. Molly looks friendly enough, but she's also a chemical villain, trapping heat and warming the planet. And Molly is pretty pushy. She's wrestling for space in the atmosphere, and there's only so much room. In fact, according to the science journal Nature, we might have already emitted about 1/4 of the total emissions advisable by 2050. And since atmospheric CO2 levels are rising every year, well, it might be helpful if we could capture Molly and her friends before they get there.

And since they are everywhere, we might be able to use just about anything to capture carbon, including things we use pretty much every day -- like shampoo. Maybe a little lather can help clean the air.

[BOB PERRY] This is one of my colleagues, Matt McKenna, who's part of the team.

[GOLDSTEIN] That's what Bob Perry, a chemist at General Electric's Research Center in upstate New York, has been working with. Or at least something close to it. They're called amino silicones.

[PERRY] The same types of materials that are used in shampoo and conditioners were materials that we thought we could use in this particular instance to capture carbon. While not exactly the same molecules, they're in the same family, and so our experience with those materials actually gave us the insight to, hey, why don't we try these materials?

[GOLDSTEIN] So these amino silicones are actually in our shampoo?

[PERRY] Those types of materials are in shampoos. They're the ones that make your hair a little bit softer.

[GOLDSTEIN] And as we saw in Perry's lab, those materials can absorb carbon dioxide and turn it into a powder.

[PERRY] With the CO2 that we've captured, is that we now have that in a confined space and we can then move that toward someplace for storage, for sequestration.

[GOLDSTEIN] Perry's work is pretty cool, but considering all the Mollys out there, this could take a lot of shampoo. Enter Gary Rochelle. He's a chemical engineer at the University of Texas in Austin. And this is his carbon capture test facility.

So, what exactly is this rig testing?

[ROCHELLE] This rig is testing concentrated piperazine as a solvent for CO2 capture.

[GOLDSTEIN] And piperazine is pretty close to the shampoo solution we saw at General Electric. But Rochelle takes it a step further. He's developed an industrial-strength set of nozzles to rinse the carbon dioxide out of the exhaust or flue gas of a coal-fired power plant.

So this is kind of like the showerhead for CO2.

[ROCHELLE] This is the showerhead for CO2.

[GOLDSTEIN] Here's how it works. The giant showerhead sprays solvent on carbon dioxide molecules as they rise up to the top of the smokestack. The solvent then catches or absorbs the CO2 before it escapes.

[ROCHELLE] So the CO2 comes into the bottom of the absorber. The flue gas goes up the absorber. Solution comes in the top of the absorber, comes down, and washes out the CO2.

[GOLDSTEIN] So, we've got our shampoo, we've got our showerhead, but can we really put them together to capture carbon in the real world?

[ROCHELLE] This is a scale-up from what we do on campus, which is bench-scale stuff. You've got little, tiny beakers and things, and so we needed to show that the innovations that we've developed on campus can really work.

[GOLDSTEIN] But to scale it up for existing coal plants -- which can be 20 times as big as this test rig -- carbon capture gets really expensive.

[ROCHELLE] About a billion dollars.

[GOLDSTEIN] Per plant?

[ROCHELLE] Per plant.

[GOLDSTEIN] And considering that there are nearly 600 coal-fired power plants in the U.S., that's a lot of money. How much would you and I pay?

[ROCHELLE] The consumer's going to see an increase in the cost of the electricity of 5 to 10 cents per kilowatt hour. That's a 50% to 100% increase in what they'll be paying for electricity.

[GOLDSTEIN] So double their current prices that they're paying now.

But David Hawkins, the director of the Climate Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, says it's worth the cost.

[HAWKINS] If we're going to use fossil fuels, carbon capture has got to be in the toolbox. Otherwise, we're not going to be able to protect the climate.

[GOLDSTEIN] To retrofit carbon capture technology onto coal-fired power plants, how much is that going to cost?

[HAWKINS] Well, the power plant industry in the United States is huge. It takes in revenues of about $300 billion a year. So doing anything to our electric generating fleet is going to be a huge cost over time. But that's the point -- it will be over time.

[GOLDSTEIN] And over time, the cost may be spread out enough that you won't even notice. That's according to Pierre Gauthier, whose company designs power plants here in the U.S. He says you're probably paying higher rates already to clean up other environmental problems like acid rain.

[GAUTHIER] And it was an extra cost. Today nobody even thinks about it. It's just worked its way into the rates, as standards and regulations that you have to do to do business and generate power. We believe the same thing will happen to CO2.

[GOLDSTEIN] Back in Texas, Gary Rochelle says his technology could be ready for prime time in five years. But he says there's a catch. Unless Congress passes a cap-and-trade law to limit global warming gases, few if any companies will want to spend money on capturing carbon.

[ROCHELLE] We're still five years away. Five years ago, we were five years away. And until we pass cap-and-trade legislation, we'll always be five years away.

[GOLDSTEIN] Congress and the White House, though, haven't been able to agree on how to address the carbon challenge. And unfortunately, we can't pluck carbon out of the air and put it in our pocket. At least not anytime soon. Dan Goldstein, "energyNOW!"

[ASSURAS] The Department of Energy has been funding some carbon capture research in hopes of making the technology cheaper. And it has another $4 billion to shell out. Seven U.S. power plant projects have been tagged as recipients of some of that money to test different CCS technologies on a bigger scale, but it won't cover all of the companies' costs. One of those companies, American Electric Power, recently backed out of the Carbon Capture Demonstration Program.

AEP was eligible for more than $300 million in federal funds to help build a carbon capture project at its Mountaineer coal-fired power plant in West Virginia. It would have trapped about 1 1/2 million tons of carbon dioxide a year and injected it about 1 1/2 miles underground for permanent storage. The utility blamed the collapse of climate legislation in Congress and the weak economy for its decision.

And late last year, a utility in North Dakota also shelved a carbon capture project for similar reasons. Despite these setbacks, the Department of Energy says it will keep working with the private sector to find innovative and cost-competitive ways to capture carbon.