Fresh approaches to energy use and production are vital if serious climate change is to be averted and developing countries are to attain the standards of living to which they aspire. However, the rich nations spend a deplorably low proportion of their research funds on energy — far less, in real terms, than they were spending 25 years ago.

The case for greater emphasis on energy research is overwhelming, and was made again last week by Martin Rees, president of Britain's Royal Society (see Science 313, 591; 2006). But sometimes research can get in the way of deployment. Scientists can always find further interesting questions, and research can become an end in itself. In some fields, there is a need, instead, for action. Energy conservation is the most obvious case. Carbon capture and storage — which offers the possibility of using fossil fuels without releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere (see page 620) — is another.

Bringing carbon sequestration onto a faster track requires more than scattered demonstration projects and a vague hope that prudent industries might voluntarily adopt it at some point in the future. The International Energy Agency predicts that 1,400 gigawatts of new, coal-fired generating capacity will be commissioned worldwide in the next 25 years. The United States has proposals for 153 coal-fired plants under consideration, few of which are likely to be designed with carbon capture in mind. And every year, China builds coal-powered plants capable of generating a stunning 75 gigawatts — an energy project on a scale unprecedented in human history. To ensure that carbon dioxide from at least some of these plants is stored away in geologically suitable repositories requires more than research; it needs political will.

Evidence of such political will would include regulations or fiscal incentives to design plants so that carbon-capture equipment can be retrofitted to them with relative ease. And those who build plants must be convinced that, at some time in the future, any carbon dioxide they emit will be a cost to their businesses.

Carbon capture and storage is no panacea. It substantially decreases the efficiency of all existing plant types. It also requires an enormous infrastructure — putting carbon dioxide back down into the ground requires pipes and pumping comparable to that needed to bring oil and gas up out of it. Some reservoirs may turn out to be flawed, leaking carbon back over decades or centuries. Even under the most optimistic assumptions, less than half of human-produced carbon dioxide emissions could possibly be captured and stored.

Carbon sequestration is the only option that would allow the use of fossil energy without the threat of dangerously altering Earth's climate system.

Even so, carbon sequestration is the only credible option that would allow the continued use of fossil energy without the threat of dangerously altering Earth's climate system. Speeding up its deployment must therefore become a priority on the global energy agenda.

Parallel development of several different approaches to carbon sequestration will be needed. The more hands-on experience that's gained with carbon capture from different plant types, and with carbon storage in different kinds of underground reservoir, the easier it will be to convince governments and industry to begin carbon sequestration on a commercial scale.

But political negotiations, regulatory frameworks and further research and development need not await the results of existing pilots. The G8 nations, together with China, India, Mexico, Brazil and South Africa, should tell their energy industries in no uncertain terms that carbon production will cost them, and that sequestration is a partial solution available in the short term. In some situations, subsidies and other incentives may be justified.

As the largest and fastest-growing emitters, respectively, the United States and China need to take the lead on this. Not all the approaches to carbon capture will work out, and some money will doubtless be wasted. But the risks are small compared with the potential benefits of making some significant inroads into carbon dioxide emissions.