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."

Comments

Re:Better solution exists

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Safety?

[Anonymous Coward]

This brought up Lake Nyos in my mind... What if all that CO2 escapes, indeed.

Re:So...

[kaos07]

"Why can't we do both?

Why should we? Sequestration has only been proven effect in labs, and the coal industry accepts that it won't be completely up and running by 2030. Wind and solar have been proven to work now. Entire cities and even states in some countries are being run on renewable technologies. It's proven, it works, it's emission free. Carbon sequestration doesn't get rid of the fact that we're un-sustainably mining the earth, creating vast amounts of CO2 and then *hoping* that when we bury it underground there won't be any negative consequences.

"Never wanting to compromise or find some benefits in alternatives."

This is less a compromise and more the coal and mining industry refusing to accept their imminent demise, and instead of looking to the REAL future like some companies (BP?) they'd rather try and flog of unproven and, even in theory, ridiculous ideas to the public.

Re:That's the main problem with environmental grou

[kaos07]

"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.

Re:What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

[silvermorph]

Hey neat, we're making our own Balrog.

Stupid

[tsotha]

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.

Re:Why not worry about water shooting out of wells

[jmv]

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.

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

Greenpeace wants alternatives, not technology that might arrive in 10+ years, only to prolong the existing energy production system. Huh? They've been kicking and screaming for decades to shut down our current power generation systems to replace them with unworkable, economically infeasible systems, when France has been using a safe, zero-carbon power generation system for decades as well. They're the ones living the pipe dream, not the rest of us.

Re:So...

[Wrath0fb0b]

Wind and solar have been proven to work now. Sorry, it's not that I don't wish that were true but it's just not. Look up the annual energy consumption of the US (105 exajoules (29000 TWh) -- according to Wikipedia) and try to come up with any reasonable scenario in which that much energy can be produced by wind and solar. I've tried to run the numbers even in the most favorable cases and they just aren't there without a huge boost in the efficiency and economy of those alternative methods.

Don't get me wrong, I think we are on the same team here but I refuse to believe, in the face of hard evidence, that wind + solar + geothermal + hydrodynamic + tidal energy will be sufficient to meet domestic US demand for the foreseeable future. Even the most aggressive energy efficiency plans won't kick in in earnest for a decade (cars turn over roughly 10 years, home appliances every 25, homes every 50 and the more you impose, the more costs go up and the slower the turnover happens).

This is less a compromise and more the coal and mining industry refusing to accept their imminent demise News of their impending demise is highly overrated. The US has enough coal to last us 50 years at current growth rates and China likely does too. With oil capacity down and natural gas reserves dwindling, Americans will either have to consume much less energy (not likely) or tap into coal.

Re:So...

[rkcallaghan]

R2.0 wrote:

Where on earth are you getting this data? Please provide at least some reference to any accumulation of people that is self sufficient on solar and wind. How about from Slashdot, still on the main page as of my writing this post?

~Rebecca

Re:WTF?

[Boycott BMG]

On a less sarcastic note if you have figured out that plants need CO2 to live, then there is probably hope that once you start looking at the so-called science of manmade global warming, you'll discover that it's not science at all.

To put the project in perspective Kiluea pumps out around 700,000 tons a year, and Pinatubo put out more CO2 in '91 than the entire output of all mankinds exisistence. As it turns out nature responds by (suprise suprise) increasing plantlife. So we are going to offset Kiluea for 1.5 ( to be generous) years by pumping it underground.

I'm no scientist, but I do know BS when I smell it. Concerning volcanoes in particular, http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Hazards/What/VolGas/volgas.html

Comparison of CO2 emissions from volcanoes vs. human activities.
Scientists have calculated that volcanoes emit between about 130-230 million tonnes (145-255 million tons) of CO2 into the atmosphere every year (Gerlach, 1999, 1991). This estimate includes both subaerial and submarine volcanoes, about in equal amounts. Emissions of CO2 by human activities, including fossil fuel burning, cement production, and gas flaring, amount to about 27 billion tonnes per year (30 billion tons) [ ( Marland, et al., 2006) - The reference gives the amount of released carbon (C), rather than CO2, through 2003.]. Human activities release more than 130 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes--the equivalent of more than 8,000 additional volcanoes like Kilauea (Kilauea emits about 3.3 million tonnes/year)! (Gerlach et. al., 2002)

also, concerning Mt. Pinatubo itself, http://pubs.usgs.gov/pinatubo/wolfe/

Gerlach and others estimate that, in addition to the measured 17 Mt of SO2, the eruption of approximately 5 km3 of magma was accompanied by release of at least 491 to 921 Mt of H2O, 3 to 16 Mt of Cl, and 42 to 234 Mt of CO2.

So Mt. Pinatubo let off 42 to 234 Mt of CO2, which is more than 100 times less than what man released in 2006.

Re:So...

[Gibbs-Duhem]

If we run off of U235 plants, we'll run out of cheap uranium poste haste. The only way we know of to extend our nuclear fuel supply is to reprocess the U238 transmuted to plutonium (or thorium to U233) into additional fuel. However, this is readily achievable.

Conveniently, this sort of breeder reactor also has the ready potential to result in much more *complete* burning of nuclear fuel, resulting in much further reacted, and generally much shorter half-life products. The half life of breeder reactor waste can be as low as 100 years, and as the 95% of the enriched uranium that is U238 becomes viable fuel instead of being discarded as plutonium, the amount of waste per unit power drops by many orders of magnitude

Right now, India is the only country I am aware of that does extensive breeding (they're not in the Non-proliferation treaty, and don't have natively mined uranium, so they transmute thorium into fissile material) although France does some as well. The US doesn't do it because of proliferation concerns (which makes no sense to me, but whatever). However, since switching to a full nuclear power system requires going to breeder reactors anyway, it will also result in massively less waste (probably way less than coal power, and better contained), and shorter-lived waste.

Re:So...

[cheater512]

People want to have their cake and eat it as well.

They will do anything possible to be environmentally friendly as long as they dont have to change their habits, spend money or essentially do anything at all.

Re:Once again some basic math.

[lusiphur69]

The Chinese are exempt from Kyoto... So, too, is the US, as it refuses to sign. Meanwhile, free trade agreements with every tinpot dicator and banana republic are signed without a second thought - see: Colombia. Your argument comes down to my neighbour won't do anything about the growing pile of garbage on their lawn, hence it's ok if I continue to pile garbage on my lawn. Plus, moving the garbage off my lawn will cost me money and let's face it, that's the real reason nothing is being done. There's no math here - only a refusal to deal with the real issue while shuffling blame on someone else. Other people doing nothing does not make an excuse for us to do nothing. Kyoto is obviously imperfect, but a refusal to do anything is not a plan - unless you call a suicide pact a plan.

Please see above, and while you are at it, also add carbon emissions for the developing third world ... what happens when Africa decides to get air conditioning? This is precisely why renewable energy needs to be heavily subsidized and deployed, combined with reducing consumption. We need to improve and cheapen the technologies we can use to make 'green' power. What happens when you bury CO2 in the ground? Do you think it magically disappears from the equation? No, it simply becomes someone else's problem - likely someone who wakes up dead when a seal fails and CO2 displaces all the air near the leak site. Of course demand is going to go up, as I pointed out. I notice you abandoned your earlier argument of the 'biosphere' generating most atmospheric CO2 - that's progress, at least.

We have to be able to take CO2 out of the air, and put it somewhere We're not taking it out of the air, we're taking it out of coal plants, plants will will increasingly use because of the sequestration. It would go into the air, because we keep burning coal - however, we could just reduce our dependency on coal, through reduced consumption, energy-efficient technologies and renewable power sources, and end up with a net plus that does not burden future generations with nightmare 'CO2 escape' scenarios. Yes, these things cost money, which is why storing gas in a hole sounds like a good idea to suits at the DoE - it's not cheap, but it's cheaper.

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.

Re:So...

[Ex-MislTech]

The SEGs system is online now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEGS

In 2.5 square miles they produce 350 Mega-watts of power
and do it with reflective troughs and heating high temperature
oil to drive a steam turbine.

They store hot oil and get some production even after sundown,
and then switch to natural gas for a few hours til sunrise.

If the uninhabited sections of the Mojave Desert
were used for this system, it would power all of North America.

The Mojave is over 22,000 sq. miles, if 10,000 of it was used
for a SEGs type setup you would get 4,000 times the current
power production ie. 1.41 Tera-Watts rough estimate.

In 2004 it was estimated by scientists that total world
energy usage was 15 Tera-Watts for all types of energy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_resources_and_consumption

The proposed SEGs expansion would produce almost 10% of that.

We have our silver bullet, it will just be a monster to build.

North Africa could use the Sahara and power all of Africa
and Europe.

The best photovoltaic cells are 20% effective, The best Thermals
have hit 41% per wikipedia, and 60% being theoretically possible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_thermal_energy#High-temperature_collectors

Here in the US we could also use a large part of the 120,000 sq. mi.
Sonora Desert.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonora_desert

Just my 2 cents...