Scientists consider carbon storage a "bridge" technology
Watch an animation of the Sleipner Project process.
Scientists working to find energy solutions for the 21st century believe a stopgap solution could involve the capture and storage of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.
They call this a “bridge” technology, not a permanent solution. In the short term, it could help mitigate climate change by storing carbon dioxide or CO2 from power plants underground to prevent its release into the atmosphere.
Lynn Orr: Eventually, of course we’d like to transition to having a significantly bigger fraction of renewables like wind and solar and biomass…. but those will take some time, allowing for CO2 capture and storage gives us some options for reducing CO2 more quickly.
That’s Lynn Orr, the director of the Global Climate and Energy Project at Stanford University. He told Earth & Sky the technology exists for removing carbon from industrial greenhouse gases.
More difficult, so far, is carbon storage. Leakage is a concern. The Sleipner Project in the North Sea – a project of a Norwegian petroleum company has been capturing CO2 and injecting it into permeable rock beneath a seabed. They say this avoids the release of over 1 million tons of carbon per year into the atmosphere.
Lynn Orr said an ideal site for carbon storage would have porous rocks that’ll hold the carbon, plus caprock – an impermeable rock layer – that would keep the carbon from leaking back into the atmosphere.
He explained that injecting carbon into the Earth would use some of the same technologies that are already being used to extract fossil fuels from rock. In fact, carbon storage may release more oil during the process.
The mission of the Global Climate and Energy Project at Stanford University is to do fundamental research on global energy technologies that will have significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions.
Focus on carbon capture and storage from the World Energy Council.
Europe is looking hard at carbon storage. See: EU Energy Commissioner Reviews Carbon Capture on Visit to Sleipner, Offshore Norway
Our thanks to:
Lynn Orr
Director, Global Climate and Energy Project
Professor, Department of Energy Resources Engineering
Stanford University
and
Elizabeth Wilson
Assistant Professor of Energy and Environmental Policy
Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs
University of Minnesota
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