last updated 8th December 05
by 4ecotips.com

Subterranean dumping isn't the answer

The technology fallout from the Montreal global warming conference which closes this week has not impacted on the world - yet. However, one fresh approach that has had a really good airing although it's been on the drawing board for a couple of years is carbon dioxide capture and storage.

Sounds a bit like men with big nets grabbing clouds of carbon and forcing them in to the back of a white van before being carted off to a dungeon somewhere. Actually it's a lot simpler than that - well at least on the surface!

In 2003 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change agreed to produce a special report on the subject which emerged in October. But in the meantime other interest have been considering the possibilities of the technique.

A leading carbon-storage scientist, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Sally Benson, told scientists last Monday that all available research suggests thousands of billions of tons of carbon dioxide could be shoved underground safely and securelyfor 1,000 years or more.

"Many believe the retention times could be over a million years," Benson said at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union, one of the world's largest scientific societies.

That would allow two of the most energy-hungry nations, China and the United States, to tap copious native supplies of coal and perhaps buy time for a shift to new, carbon-free energy sources.

Both countries are headed fast toward a coal-powered future, with utilities planning construction of as many as 174 coal-fired power plants by 2025 in the United States. In half that time, China expects to build as many as 562 coal plants, and India plans 213.

So far, virtually none of the new coal plants are expected to capture carbon-dioxide emissions. The plants could release five times the amount of carbon dioxide that nations have promised to cut under the Kyoto treaty, largely erasing the pact's effect.

But at least some of the carbon dioxide could be kept out of the atmosphere if plants could be built or retrofitted with technology for capturing carbon dioxide, then compressing it for piping or transporting to an injection well, scientists say.

Oceans and plants now absorb the majority of carbon dioxide released to the atmosphere. But a competing idea of stowing yet more of the gas deep under the sea looks remote, with some studies showing that the injected gas dramatically affects the sea.

The technique has yet to be fully acknowledged but pouring carbon dioxide underground seems to be compounding the problem for future generations. Carbon emissions need to be tackled at source and not allowed to develop in the first instance!