Long-Term Carbon Storage

zebadee writes "The UK has given £25 million ($45 million) in funding toward storing CO2 under the North Sea. The article at the BBC has a discussion on how this will be achieved. Basically gases produced at the power station will be pumped into old oil and gas fields for long-term storage. This has the added effect of pressurising the wells, allowing better recovery of the contents."

Comments

Only helps a little

[WalksOnDirt]

Given how the article talks about how expensive carbon sequestration is, nuclear plants seem to be a better option for producing electricity. You're not going to be able to separate out 100% of the carbon dioxide from the waste stream anyway.

The example of reducing the emissions from steel plants is very interesting. I'm sure there are ways to refine steel that don't release carbon (e.g. electrolysis), but using coke would probably still be much cheaper even with the costs of removing most of the carbon from the flue gases. Getting steel plants to implement this without being wiped out (by carbon emitting overseas competitors) or supported by massive government subsidies sounds very tricky, though.

I really think the best first step for reducing green house gases is to stop producing more coal fired power plants, and schedule the eventual closing of the current ones. The amount of damage done to the atmosphere by the remaining oil to be extracted is probably manageable, but there is enough coal (and tar sands, oil shale, etc.) to cause much more severe problems.