A Plan for U.S. Emissions to Be Buried Under Sea

In an ambitious proposal to counter global warming, an upstart power developer wants to build a coal-fired electric plant on the outskirts of New York City that would capture its emissions of carbon dioxide and pump the pollutant 70 miles offshore. The gas would be injected into sandstone a mile beneath the ocean floor in the hope that it would stay there for eons.

Experts have thought for years that capturing the emissions from power plants will be a crucial technology for limiting climate change. But high cost projections and scientific uncertainty have meant that progress on the technique has been limited, even as the effects of global warming are starting to be felt around the world.

Now SCS Energy, based in Concord, Mass., contends not only that it can build the world