Research on a dire problem--carbon capture--gets going

"Without carbon capture and sequestration, we are all toast."

Jiang Lin, a scientist with the China Sustainable Energy Program with Lawrence Berkeley Lab, issued that gloomy proclamation earlier this week, and it's a fitting description of the current world situation when it comes to global warming. To make it worse, I asked Lin about how the world is responding to the challenge. Not well.

"We haven't invested in deep research or spent much money in testing out the scenarios," he said. "There are a lot of uncertainties."

Still, it's not over yet, and the University of Texas this week announced it has received a $38 million grant to study the feasibility of injecting carbon dioxide into brine-filled underground wells over a 10-year period.

The project is part of the Southeast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (SECARB), funded by the National Energy Technology Laboratory of the Department of Energy. SECARB's goal is to study carbon-dioxide injection and storage capacity of the Tuscaloosa-Woodbine geologic system that stretches from Texas to Florida. The region has the potential to store more than 200 billion tons of the gas, which the department says it equal to about 33 years of emissions.

Beginning in the fall, SECARB scientists will start to inject a million tons of carbon dioxide a year into a brine reservoir near Natchez, Mississippi. The brine is up to 10,000 feet below the surface.

In some ways, the U.S. is the Saudi Arabia of gaping holes. The U.S. has produced more oil than anywhere else in the world, historically speaking--250 billion gallons have been sucked out of the ground here--there is lots of empty space underground, according to Chevron's CTO Don Paul, who spoke this week at the Dow Jones Alternative Energy Innovations Conference.

Sequestration, though, poses logistical and financial challenges, Paul said. Just to capture the carbon dioxide coming out of power plants, factories and other "stationary" carbon-dioxide emitters, it would take an infrastructure the same size as the natural gas infrastructure.

"That's a lot of pipe," Paul said. Paul also issued some interesting facts on peak oil.

[Leria]

More 'global warming' scare tactics

When are people going to realize that global warming is nothing but absolute BUNK!

The other planets in the solar system are also getting hotter, and there is nothing that we can do to cause that. The only thing that can cause that: the sun putting out more energy into the solar system.

[jriebe]

BUNK is as BUNK does

I gotta say, when one does very little research, or listens only to their sole favorite talk-show/radio host, it shows.

Truth is, global warming is real, man's effect is proven, and it may not be as bad as Al Gore says (he does not deserve a Nobel Prize by the way, IMHO), but if we don't do something now, it will only get worse - and sooner rather than later.

Planetary warming of other planets has definitely been indicated by recent studies, but I've not yet seen definitive correlative evidence that shows the other planetary warming trends are in fact related to the rate at which Earth has warmed over recent decades.

CO2 sequestration may not be the 'right' solution, and certainly is not the ONLY solution, but at least there are people out there looking FOR solutions, to help us live on this beauty of a planet a bit longer than if nobody did anything at all. We CAN all do our tiny little individual part to help Mother Earth...

[Manhattan2]

The fix is to let the trees do what they are supposed to do.

Stashing CO2 away somewhere is just a scheme to hide the real problem which is overpopulation and too much stored up fossil fuel usage. The long term fix is called Solar Transfer and it captures the suns energy the way coal or oil did millions of years ago. Once we reduce our CO2 output the natural process of plants and trees will take care of the CO2. Don?t spend millions, 38 in this case just trying to put small patches on too many holes. The answer is solar power and we will be releasing it within a few months. It is time someone gets this problem under control and our engineers have spent years working on oil independence, not trying to find a place to put the results of our thirst for oil! There is a better way. Solar Transfer!

[Agavelez]

Why not use biocoal? It's got the same energy density as coal and can be handled and pulverized exactly the same. I am developing a project to produce it from agave biomass (35+ tonnes of biocoal per hectare per year) and will sell it at a lower price than coal, making it very attractive for electricity generating facilities and heavy industries. With the cap and trade system around the corner, it will be a great business (The US carbon market will reach 2T USD in the near future).

Biomass derived biofuels (syngas, biooil, biocoal) can substitute fossil fuels not only at electric generating facilities and industry, but also in transportation, at a lower cost (in all of them) and without polluting and warming our beloved planet.

Agave grows in marginal land (semiarid and Mediterranean climates), thrives with no watering nor agrochemicals, is easy to cultivate at a very low cost of prodf
uction. I am trying to start plantations in Texas and California, the 1st and 2nd largest GHG emission States in the USA. Then, I will go to China and India.

Agave produces 3X more sugars than sugarcane, 4X more cellulose than the fastest growing eucalyptus and captures 5X more CO2 than the GMO poplar tree or 15X more than pines.

Regards,
Arturo Velez
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