This article got kind of long – or really long. I’ve provided a table of contents so that you can just hop to the parts you want to read!
I. Introduction: Carbon Sequestration in the U.K.
1. How much CO2 do they want to put under there?
2. Do we have the technology available to accomplish this?
3. How much money will this cost?
4. Is this just a big, fat load of greenwash?
5. Is this going on in the U.S.?
North Sea Coast (near Newcastle)
The other day while driving in my car, I heard a story on NPR about carbon sequestration. According to the story, Britain has been pumping fossil fuels out of the North Sea and now there is some empty space down there. So, rumor has it that Britain is interested in selling the space under the ocean floor to companies who would like to dump their CO2 there. The man quoted in the article is Mike Stephenson, who is with the British Geological Survey. He said that this could earn Britain $6 billion a year and provide 60,000 jobs. When asked if this was dangerous for marine life or not, his words of comfort were “We can see the CO2 collecting, we know what it’s doing. So the science is telling us it looks OK.” Yes, I’m sure that’s similar to what they told the people who lived near Chernobyl – Don’t worry folks, everything looks okay!
Here are my issues:
1. How much CO2 do they want to put under there?
Guardian.co.uk, Article: Plan to bury CO2 Under the North Sea, September 5, 2009
“Millions of tonnes of the polluting greenhouse gas carbon dioxide could be piped from the power stations that produce it and dumped underneath the North sea”
“By pumping the gas down into waterlogged rock formations and empty gas reservoirs underneath the seabed, the scientists say they could effectively dispose of decades of pollution produced by burning fossil fuels such as coal and gas.”
2. Do we have the technology available to accomplish this?
Guardian.co.uk, Article: Plan to bury CO2 Under the North Sea, September 5, 2009
“New technology to capture the carbon dioxide produced from the power stations would have to be developed, and an extensive network of underground pipes set up to carry it hundreds of miles to the coast. More importantly, scientists will have to show that the enormous bubbles of carbon dioxide they would create under the seabed are safe, stable and will not leak out over time.” — Doesn’t sound like they are ready to even think about implementing this.
Washington Post, Article: Carbon’s Future Wagered on Carbon Capture, August 11, 2009
“Yet carbon capture and storage remains the elusive holy grail of the coal industry, an idea that could contain the damage inflicted by coal-burning power plants but a technology that remains expensive, energy intensive and largely untested. Even optimists say it will not be commercially available for another six to 10 years. Pessimists say it might take much longer, and may never be ready for widespread use without attaching a punishingly high price to carbon.”
3. How much money will this cost?
Guardian.co.uk, Article: Plan to bury CO2 Under the North Sea, September 5, 2009
“The biggest obstacle, however, will be cost. The DTI report estimates the CCS storage scheme would cost between £34 and £93 to prevent each tonne of carbon dioxide being emitted, putting about 1p to 2.3p on to the price of a unit of electricity. It says this is about the same as the cost of building offshore wind farms and developing tidal and wave energy systems.”
Washington Post, Article: Carbon’s Future Wagered on Carbon Capture, August 11, 2009
“The huge carbon capture and storage devices are hugely expensive, too. AEP executives estimate that the cost of carbon capture for a modest-size coal plant of about 235 megawatts would start at $700 million. That works out to about $100 for a ton of carbon dioxide, far above the projections made by the Environmental Protection Agency about prices under a cap-and-trade scheme similar to one passed by the House in June. MIT put the cost of carbon capture and storage at $50 to $70 a ton.”
4. Is this just a big, fat load of greenwash?
Guardian.co.uk, Article: Plan to bury CO2 Under the North Sea, September 5, 2009
“Critics argue the idea is an expensive and probably unworkable smokescreen for continued reliance on fossil fuels.” –I tend to agree with this, myself.
Washington Post, Article: Carbon’s Future Wagered on Carbon Capture, August 11, 2009
“There is no credible pathway towards prudent greenhouse gas stabilization targets without CO2 emissions reduction from existing coal power plants,” Ernest Moniz, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of President Obama’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology, said in a report earlier this year. “We urgently need technology options for these plants and policies that incentivize implementation.” — Yes, this is in reference to U.S. carbon capture, but I agree! Instead of spending so much money on carbon capture, can we spend that money on technology promoting carbon reduction?!
5. Is this going on in the U.S.?
Washington Post, Article: Carbon’s Future Wagered on Carbon Capture, August 11, 2009
“On Monday the Obama administration awarded $20 million of that to a program that uses supersonic shockwaves to compress carbon for storage, on top of $408 million in stimulus money awarded to two other carbon pilot projects. It has pledged $1 billion more to a model plant called FutureGen. If the Waxman-Markey climate bill becomes law, a new Carbon Storage Research Corp. would pump another $1.1 billion a year into researching this nascent technology, and first movers would get billions of dollars more in bonus emission allowances that could be sold.”
NPR, Marketplace, September 11, 2009
“Stephenson says the U.K. should follow the example of Texas, which has a similar geology. The state is already promoting itself as “the CO2 sink for the U.S.”" –GAAAAH!
My conclusion is that I’m scared. It concerns me that we are just trying to hide these emissions rather than reduce them. It seems like a lot of money and research for something that is, at best, just a stop-gap. It blew my mind to hear the guy on NPR blithely chatter away about how much money this is going to generate in the U.K. If it is costing so much money, wouldn’t putting these funds towards alternative energy research also have the potential to generate revenue and provide plenty of jobs? I know that I am not the most educated person when it comes to this issue, but at soon as I heard the NPR report, alarms started going off in my head – Danger, Will Robinson! Danger, Will Robinson! – and none of the articles I’ve read have provided even the smallest modicum of comfort.
NPR, Marketplace, September 11, 2009
Washington Post, Article: Carbon’s Future Wagered on Carbon Capture, August 11, 2009
Guardian.co.uk, Article: Plan to bury CO2 Under the North Sea, September 5, 2009
In fact, the Guardian has an entire section of its website dedicated to Carbon Capture
Business Week, Article: Is 2009 the Year of Carbon Storage?, February16, 2009
September 16th, 2009 at 10:34 am
So FutureGen is a CO2 sequestration power plant plan that has just been approved, and will be built in Matoon, IL, about 40 mins away from my house. I agree with you, esp. regarding sequestration in sea deposits.
Sequestration is good in that it removes (some) CO2 from the short (ie, atmospheric) carbon cycle. This is good, b/c we add carbon to the short cycle whenever we take it from deep storage (ie, by burning fossil fuels. However, it doesn’t promote industry to really reduce CO2 emissions in the long run. Just as there were larger implications to 1rst-gen biofuels, like distorting the world’s fuel markets, CO2 sequestration is a potential pitfall for future generations. Reduction I think is the best solution, but our market system just doesn’t work that way…
September 17th, 2009 at 10:49 am
I do understand that it is good that the carbon won’t be released directly into the atmosphere. That’s one good part. I think that it’s kind of like putting your garbage in cans and keeping them out in the back yard. It’s not in land fill, but it’s still there. My concern too would be if all that sequestered CO2 was suddenly released all at once due to some catastrophe–like an earthquake perhaps? One article sounded excited when it said that they could store carbon for the next 100 years!—just long enough to make it somebody else’s problem. Hopefully, we will be able to figure out a better solution, but you’re right — when the $ is not there, it becomes difficult.