Slashdot Mirror
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.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
If only we could engineer a self-replicating machine that uses carbon from the air and turns it into a pretty dense and perhaps even useful solid material.
If I made such a machine I might call it 'The Real Easy Extraction' machine
"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.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
Hey neat, we're making our own Balrog.
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.
that's why all the plans involve putting it down somewhere.
If it was stored in gas form at atmospheric pressure, it wouldn't be a problem (it would just be silly). The problem is that if it's stored in highly compressed or solid form, then if something goes wrong and it goes back to gas, it *will* go up and escape, potentially killing anyone in the area.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
Trees are great but I heard that a lot of the world's oxygen comes from aquatic plants so I did a quick fact check and found this:
It is estimated that between 70% and 80% of the oxygen in the atmosphere is produced by marine plants. sourceWhich means that a lot of CO2 is consumed by these plants right? I'm now wondering, if these marine plants only have access to dissolved CO2 in the water would it help to diffuse CO2 into the water? Wouldn't this be a good alternative being that there are so many "Easy Extraction" machines in the seas? These are also not susceptible to forest fires AFAIK.
You want fun, go home and buy a monkey!
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.