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DOE Pumps $126.6 Million Into Carbon Sequestration
RickRussellTX writes "The DOE awarded $126.6 million in grants today to projects that will pump 1 million tons of CO2 into underground caverns at sites in California and Ohio. Environmental groups call carbon sequestration "a scam", claiming that it is too expensive and uncertain to be competitive with non-coal alternatives like wind and solar. I just hope nobody drops a Mentos down the wrong pipe."
..."claiming that it is too expensive and uncertain to be competitive with non-coal alternatives like wind and solar."
Why can't we do both? Damn environmentalists meddling again. Never wanting to compromise or find some benefits in alternatives.
Actually, my main concern is "what if it escapes?". Considering that CO2 is heavier than Oxygen, I wouldn't like to be anywhere near (i.e. within tens of km if not more) a site that stores thousands of tons of CO2.
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That's the main problem with environmental groups. At their core, many of them are just as immune to rational argument and unwilling to consider proposals that don't line up with their pre-conceived notions as the fossil fuel industries and their pet politicians.
The arguments against sequestration are (so far as I've seen) just as bogus as the anti-nuclear waste disposal arguments. I'm glad that these groups recognize when there are problems with any given technology, I just wish their response to any attempt to address the problem wasn't a knee-jerk claim that the proposed fix was a scam and that the only solution was to abandon the technology and switch to moonbeams.
--MarkusQ
1. Grow Bamboo 2. Drop down old salt mine or other large hole. 3. ??? 4. Profit!
meh
"many of them are just as immune to rational argument"
Your statement hinges on the fact that coal industry has indeed given any rational arguments to support the burying of CO2 (A very literal way of 'burying your head in the sand', don't you think?). Let's step back and look at the problem. The main issue we have the moment is global warming being caused by an excess of greenhouses gases, predominantly CO2 in the atmosphere. We need solutions. Renewable energy is a solution. Cutting back on energy usage is a solution. And yes, even sequestration is a solution. However, what are the best and most effective solutions to take? Cutting back our usage can be done now and it can have significant effects in the area of reducing CO2 output. Renewables are already a proven technology and lack only significant funding to make them more common. That said, in many countries and states funding is significant and renewable energy targets are set to be met. Now let's look at sequestration. Is it proven? Only in laboratories. Which if you consider the scale and possible ramifications of the process is a fairly useless sticking point. Is it safe? Well you decide for yourself. Pumping millions of tonnes into underground caverns? Versus building windmills, hydro plants and solar farms. Does it solve our problems? In the short term it prevents CO2 from immediately going into the atmosphere but burying it can't continue indefinitely, and it does nothing to reduce our reliance on coal - a finite source.
The idea virtually is a scam, it's the coal industry asking for grants and subsidies all across the world to support a dying business instead of looking the facts in the face and realising that renewables are the way of the future. No amount of exaggeration (Moonbeams?) on your part will change that.
One issue is that it is very easy to covert trees and other plants back into gasses.
And then as you plant more of them, and get a forest that looks like a tree farm, fire becomes a larger risk.
And then your carbon sequestration devices are threatening surrounding communities.
A huge issue across the US is overpopulation of forests because we have been preventing forest fires for so long, so there is definitely no shortage of trees in many areas.
Other than that small detail, yeah, plants are one way to easily store carbon.
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"Cutting back on energy usage is a solution."
What you really meant to say is that massive depopulation of the earth is the solution, since at this point we can only reduce the rate at which energy consumption grows, not the overall rate at which energy is consumed.
It makes the people doing it feel good. That's all it does and all it needs to do.
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I wonder if Greenpeace realizes the choice isn't between coal plants with sequestered carbon and windmills. In reality, barring some fortuitous breakthrough in solar power, as oil gets more expensive the choice will be between coal plants with this technology and coal plants without it. I believe Greenpeace has completely overestimated the average person's willingness to make lifestyle sacrifices for the sake of atmospheric carbon reductions.
I wish organizations like this would try to be part of the solution instead of just trying to limit our options. You can't accuse the coal companies of proposing a technology that isn't economically feasible on the one hand and then propose wholesale conversion to technologies that are even less economically feasible.
We wouldn't even have this problem if the very same people hadn't killed the nuclear industry through scaremongering and excessive litigation.
Not except in some green fever dream.
We will need everything we got including wind, thermal, biomass, nuclear, and good old black gold just to keep up with the inevitable buildout of the third world.
And you if think enough wind farms, biomass farms, and solar panels to supply our demands won't harm the environment as much as oil and coal, you are naive.
Everything we use for our energy supply will have costs to the environment. We must be smart. Scrub the smokestacks, reclaim the mines, kill the birds but try to minimize, plow over the forests for more farms, but use the best techniques and preserve the remaining forests smartly with corridors for animals.
There is no choice between a dirty hydrocarbon past and a clean green future. There is no such thing. There are no free lunches in anything.
Doesn't nature provide carbon sequestration in the form of Wood? Wouldn't cutting down a forest and building stuff out of the wood, meanwhile letting the forest regrow, effectively remove carbon out of the system?
Sequestration is no panecea, no cure-all - it is at best an impefect solution to an intractable problem - there are no magic bullets. Using it to justify increasingly relying on coal is idiocy at it's finest.
You're obviously right - those durn scientists just want more money. Noone is actually concerned about the future of the planet, the glacial sheets or the potential for civilization-ending change, clearly, they just want funding. That is, I'm hard pressed to find any other motive that could possibly rationalize your argument and place it in the realm of the possible.
Out of curiosity, are you also one of the card-carrying members of the 'Ozone hole is a scam' club? My landlady a long time ago was my first close encounter with one of this kind - when she said the ozone hole is a conspiracy made up by scientists, my eyes almost popped out.
This is interesting... $126.6 million dollars to remove 1 million T of carbon through sequestration.
A forest removes about 2 T a year of carbon from the atmosphere.
http://www.ucsusa.org/publications/catalyst/fa04-catalyst-forest-carbon-sequestration.html
It would take 500,000 acres to remove 1 MT of carbon from the atmosphere. (follow me so far?)
It costs approximately $68/ acre to plant forest.
www.alliancechesbay.org/pubs/projects/deliverables-77-7-2004.ppt
For $126,600,000, you could plant 1,861,764 acres.
This would remove 3,723,528 tons/ year of carbon. Roughly 3.7 times more carbon sequestration annually.
This DOE project removes one million tons once. Forests would remove 3.7 times more each year.
Tisha Hayes