The Gulf Disaster and the Future of Coal

[n2doc]

By Marc Gunther
Published June 18, 2010

If you like the BP oil spill...
...you're going to love carbon capture and storage.

Carbon capture and storage, or CCS, is the technology that offers the best hope of generating electricity from coal in a way that doesn't further heat up the planet. When people talk about "clean coal" -- a phrase that deserves quotes because coal is never entirely clean -- they're often talking about CCS.

CCS technologies, which can be applied before or after the coal is burned, are designed to capture carbon dioxide, transport it to a secure location, typically deep under the ground, and then sequester it safely for a long, long time, with little or no risk that it will ever escape.

Get the connection? Just as the oil industry assures that they can safely drill for oil a mile under the ocean, the coal companies and utility industry are very confident that can bury CO2 deep under the ground, with little or no risk that it will ever escape.

Do you want to take them at their word?


Read more: http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2010/06/18/gulf-disaster-and-future-coal

[ananda]

1. Do I want to take them at their word?

Hell no! Not now not ever.

[amandabeech]

2. Well, there is a little more experience with this.

CO2 has been pumped into oil wells in the West Texas oil fields since the 1970s. The CO2 comes from an extinct volcano, rather than from a carbon capture mechanism.

So far, there haven't been any problems that I'm aware of and I try to stay up on this stuff.

That's not to say that carbon dioxide storage is perfectly safe, but that the article misses the best example of the storage part of the equation.

[Nihil]

3. Have you any more info on this please?

> The CO2 comes from an extinct volcano, ...

I'm intrigued!

[amandabeech]

4. I just ran a quick search in Yahoo and got quite a few results.

Here's the search:

"permian basin" "carbon dioxide" oil

This may be going on in some wells in Mississippi as well, and the Canadians started pumped CO2 from an old coal gassification plant in of the Dakotas a few years ago. I think that the Canadian wells were in Saskachewan or maybe Alberta. The goal is to get all the oil out of the old wells and store CO2.

I think that we will try to get all the oil out of the ground eventually. It's just an incredibly convenient fuel and it can be used to make so many chemical products that are truly useful. I don't consider cheap plastic junk to be truly useful.

I'd rather see us cut down on coal or gassify it and store the CO2 in wells or otherwise.

[Nihil]

5. OK - thanks for that!

Learn something new every day!

> over 5.5 trillion cubic feet of carbon dioxide reserves from
> an extinct volcano in Mississippi

> injecting the wells with chilled carbon dioxide that will be brought in
> by pipeline from Mississippi. That's where Denbury owns the Jackson Dome,
> an extinct volcano that contains the biggest source of naturally occurring
> carbon dioxide on the Gulf Coast.

:wow: