ERIC BOUVET/GAMMA/GETTY IMAGES
THE CARBON QUANDARY
as much as 20,000 billion metric tons — far more than the total
annual CO₂ emissions from all
sources in the U.S., which are on
the order of 6 billion to 7 billion
metric tons per year.
Although some enhanced oil
recovery sites are located close to
power plants where CO₂ might be
harvested, most of the collected
gas would need to be shuttled between plants and underground
storage sites. Rail and trucks
could conceivably handle a small
percentage of this, but any realistic CCS system would require
HUFFINGTON
09.15.13
large new pipeline networks to
be feasible. Some studies have
suggested that 15,000 to 66,000
miles of new pipeline would be
needed over the next 15 years or
so to accommodate the volumes of
CO₂ that would arise from a widely deployed CCS program.
According to the Global CCS
Institute, there are only 36 CO₂
pipelines now operating in the
U.S., transporting from 48 to 58
million metric tons of the gas —
although the vast majority of that
CO₂ is harvested from naturally
occurring sources, rather than
stripped from power plants and
industrial sources. As it is, U.S.
coal plants by themselves emit
The 1986
carbon dioxide
eruption from
Lake Nyos in
Cameroon
that killed
more than
2,000
people and
livestock gives
supporters
pause when
considering
underground
carbon dioxide
storage
solutions.