What People Are Saying About CCS:
‘Were society to make reducing carbon dioxide emissions a priority…we would need to pursue several strategies at once. We would concentrate on using energy more efficiently…and we would employ a method that is receiving increasing attention: capturing carbon dioxide and sequestering, or sequestering, it underground rather than releasing it into the atmosphere…The goodnews is that the technology for capture and sequestration already exists and that the obstacles hindering implementation seem to be surmountable…The next few years will be critical for the development of carbon dioxide capture-and-sequestration methods as policies evolve that help to make CO2-emission reduction profitable and as licensing of sequestration sites gets underway… commitments to capture and sequestration can reduce the risks of global warming.’ – Scientific American, July 2005
‘If all goes as planned, hundreds of millions of tons of CO2 eventually could be siphoned from power plants and shipped via pipeline for burial under the Central Valley in a process known as carbon capture and sequestration…The strategy has been identified by a U.N. panel on climate change as a major option for slowing global warming. The U.S. leads the world in carbon dioxide emissions, putting 7 billion tons annually into the atmosphere. Nearly 40% comes from power plants that provide the nation's electricity. Using carbon capture and sequestration, energy experts say, Americans could continue to power their lifestyle…while keeping greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere. California could emerge as a leader in the push to put carbon dioxide underground because of its recently enacted greenhouse gas legislation, which sets mandatory caps on carbon dioxide by 2012.’ – Los Angeles Times, Oct. 25, 2006
‘The idea of burying heat-trapping air pollutants, such as carbon dioxide, may sound far-fetched, but it has emerged as a leading strategy to combat global warming. Commercial-scale operations are already under way in Canada, Norway and Algeria. The PNNL (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) project is one of dozens of small-scale tests planned across the United States. The technology isn't new. For decades, the oil industry has been injecting carbon dioxide underground to force more petroleum out of fields where production has dropped. An international review panel concluded last year that carbon dioxide from power plants can be locked up underground without leaking, contaminating groundwater or posing a risk to people, if projects are carefully designed.’-- Seattle Times, 2006
‘Carbon capture and sequestration could be part of the solution to global warming, which many climatologists attribute at least partly to a greenhouse effect that occurs when carbon dioxide and other gases trap heat in the atmosphere. The hope is that CO2 can be stripped from the emissions of power plants and other users of fossil fuels, shipped by pipeline and injected deep underground into old oil and natural gas fields or brine formations. The idea may seem simple, particularly because companies have been injecting CO2 into the ground to force oil and natural gas out of hard-to-reach formations for decades.’ -- Houston Chronicle, June 11, 2007
‘To make the task of reducing emissions vivid, we sliced the stabilization triangle into seven equal pieces, or “wedges,” each representing one billion tons a year of averted emissions 50 years from now…Our goal in developing the wedge framework was to be pragmatic and realistic – to propose engineering our way out of the problem…achieving nearly every one of the wedges requires new science and engineering to squeeze down costs and address the problems that inevitability accompany widespread deployment of new technologies. But holding CO2 emissions in 2056 to their present rate, without choking off economic growth, is a desirable outcome within our grasp…the large natural gas power plants operating in 2056 could capture and sequester their CO2, too, perhaps accounting for yet another wedge.’ -- Scientific American, September 2006
‘Deep beneath the fertile soil of the Central Valley lies what some scientists believe may be part of the defense against global warming. Instead of letting carbon dioxide flow into the atmosphere where it traps heat, the idea goes, people could bury the gas underground. An experiment led by the California Energy Commission aims to bury a sample of carbon dioxide somewhere near the Delta town of Thornton…The project is one of several by a government industry coalition called West Coast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership, or WESTCARB, that is exploring the feasibility of stashing carbon dioxide underground…Below the Earth's surface, impermeable caps of shale rock overlie layers of porous sandstone that once held natural deposits of gas and oil. “The oil and gas reservoirs are good candidates because they have held oil and gas for ... millions of years," said Larry Myer, an earth scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and WESTCARB's technical director. In other words, the land already has shown that it can sequester carbon-rich matter for a very long time.’ -- Sacramento Bee, Feb. 11, 2007
‘Injecting compressed carbon dioxide, which is a liquid, into depleted oil reservoirs is nothing new; the oil industry has been doing it for over 30 years to increase production. But as greenhouse gas levels rise, some environmentalists hope that instead of releasing sequestered carbon back into the atmosphere, we’ll be able to keep it underground—for good. “If we don’t do these injections,” says George Peridas, a scientist at the National Resources Defense Council, “we think that what these emissions will do to the climate [will be] much greater.’ -- Plenty Magazine, May 22, 2007
‘With regard to global risks, based on observations and analysis of current CO2 sequestration sites, natural systems, engineering systems and models, the fraction retained in appropriately selected and managed reservoirs is very likely to exceed 99% over 100 years, and is likely to exceed 99% over 1000 years. . . With appropriate site selection based on available subsurface information, a monitoring programme to detect problems, a regulatory system and the appropriate use of remediation methods to stop or control CO2 releases if they arise, the local health, safety and environment risks of geologic sequestration would be comparable to the risks of current activities such as natural gas sequestration, EOR and deep underground disposal of acid gas.’ -- IPCC Special Report on CCS , Sept. 2005
‘There does not appear to be unresolvable open technical issues underlying questions about CCS. . . The prospect for CO2 sequestration is excellent. . .based on 30 years of injection experience and the ability of the earth’s crust to trap CO2.’ -- MIT - The Future of Coal