THE CARBON QUANDARY
dwarfed by the sheer volume of
CO₂ that would need to be collected from coal-fired power plants,
steel and chemical facilities and
natural-gas fired power plants as
part of any meaningful climate
strategy. These billions of metric
tons of C02 would be destined for
deep underground reservoirs.
That’s a scary proposition for
many critics of CCS, who like to
point out — with some foundation — that unanticipated environmental side effects tend to accompany mankind’s penchant for
burying its problems. What happens if all that CO₂ leaks out later,
or worse, escapes all at once in
some sort of cataclysmic burp?
A favorite anecdote among
critics involves a massive, natural exhalation of carbon dioxide
from beneath Lake Nyos, in the
West African nation of Cameroon,
in 1986. The eruption blanketed
nearby towns and villages as they
slept, killing nearly 2,000 people
and thousands of livestock literally overnight.
While the episode was quite
real, CCS researchers and geological scientists have spent an inordinate amount of time and energy
explaining the lack of relevance
the Lake Nyos event has for car-
HUFFINGTON
09.15.13
bon capture and storage. In CCS,
the carbon dioxide gas is first
compressed into a liquid, then
injected into solid, porous rock
located thousands of feet underground. As explained by the Environmental Protection Agency, the
CO₂ becomes trapped in the pores
of these rock formations and, over
time, the gas “dissolves into the
How to ensure that the
carbon dioxide is, in fact,
staying put? Who is
responsible for monitoring
storage sites? How long
does that responsibility
last — 30 years?
100 years? Forever?
pore water or may be transformed
into solid minerals.”
Such formations — which include commercial oil and gas reservoirs, unmineable coal beds, and
saline formations — also sit well
below thick layers of solid clay or
shale or similar “cap rock” that is
impermeable to carbon dioxide.
The U.S. Department of Energy
now publishes an annual atlas of
suitable U.S. carbon dioxide storage areas. The current edition estimates the total potential storage
capacity in the U.S. alone may be