Graphic: Lawrence Berkeley Labs
The Department of Energy 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. The grants are subject to approval from Congress. When private money is included, the amount spent on the projects will be about $180 million over 10 years, the DOE said. So there’s still time to write a scathing letter to your US Senator or Congressperson to tell them they’d may as well just pour money down the hole and save the trouble.
Will you have carbon dioxide underfoot? Lawrence Berkeley Lab studies the locations of power plants, oil wells, and geological formations for storing carbon dioxide. Hopefully DOE will divert a little bit of money towards LBL to help in making a US map that actually represents our borders and Great lakes well. Puget Sound and much of the Great Lakes are smoothed into oblivion. Massachusetts has gained a landfill in the ocean. Maybe this is the “homogeneity adjusted” US Map? Maybe this is what the USA will look like in the future once we bloat the underworld with CO2?
Even some 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.
Of course the concept is so simple, thanks to DOE kids web, even a child can understand it. Got something you don’t want mom to see? is your room a mess? Shove it under the bed!
I just hope nobody drops a shipment of expired Mentos down the wrong hole.
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Pumping it into Oil fields that are in production can actually be a good thing – miscible CO2 floods that improve ultimate recovery of oil. Of course, the CO2 actually gets recycled around, so the net storage isn’t so great.
Depends on oil properties, pressure etc.
Anthony,
They don’t want solutions that work! This is just another form of wealth redistribution from the productive to the wage-parasites who keep the Washington scum in office.
Mike
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed — and hence clamorous to be led to safety — by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
H. L. Menken (1920)
I think this is a great solution, and possibly the best way to control CO2 levels
– if we skeptics turn out to be wrong (and there’s always that possibility), it’s good to have a silver-bullet solution ready to pull-out & save us from impending doom…!
We’re counting on you, America.
Some big honeycomb holes attracting undesirable attention down here in Victoria, Australia.
Lead out…!
they shouldn’t just sequester it. they should seriously pursue the Los Alamos concept that says it’s theoretically possible to turn it into a liquid fuel.
link: http://www.lanl.gov/news/index.php/fuseaction/home.story/story_id/12554
Hmm… are memories so short?? Anyone recall that lake in Africa that had a a supersaturated layer of dissolved CO2 at the lower levels and then underwent a thermal flip-flop and promptly killed many people and livestock with the large release of CO2?
This plan by the DOE is incredibly stupid; the exploding soda bottle is exactly the picture that should be sent in every email to the Sec. of DOE.
A number of “dry” natural gas wells produce CO2, and apparently that’s source of the CO2 that goes into the economy to power Diet Coke and what not. (Diet Coke et al drinkers – where would you like your CO2 to come from? The local power plant? Your car’s exhaust? A hole in the ground? Incinerated failed warming predictions?)
It may well be that pumping power plant exhaust back underground is a sensible thing to do.
One thing I’ve wondered, but not enough to brush off my Chemistry skills to investigate, is reacting CO2 with silica, i.e. CO2 + SiO2 == SiC + 2O2. Silicon carbide is a nice stable ceramic, though if it could be produced by genetically engineered plants, the result would probably be SiC dust which would rival volcanic dust for abrasiveness.
I figure plants already take up silica (one horsetail is called “Scouring Rush”), and they take apart CO2. I don’t know if an enzyme is strong enough to split SiO2.
http://www.illinoiswildflowers.info/grasses/plants/scouring_rush.htm
Of course, this presupposes we want CO2 to “go away”.
Perhaps SiS2 as a sulphur sink? No, it decomposes in water. There are more interesting things to do with sulphur anyway.
You’d think it’s be easier to , oh, grow some trees…
OR actually spend serious money on energy research – wanna save the environment – well, reduce CO2 anyway? Come up with a better fission ( or still better) practical fusion reactor.
More to the point, where is the evidence that this will make any difference? Is the amount of C to be “sequestered” statistically significant? Wouldn’t we be better off spending that $180m on building some new nuclear power plants, which would not only decrease carbon emissions but NO2 and SO2 emissions as well by displacing coal and natural gas power?
Here’s a radical idea, take the $.6 out of the $126.6 and transfer it to NOAA so they can do a complete on site audit of the USCHN network. Oh, and don’t spend the rest, just issue a “rebate” to taxpayers.
Of course the enviros are against carbon sequestration, the point of many of them is to shut down energy use. (If wind energy ever really gets going, they will discover the scenic and environmental abomination that it is, at least I hope so.)
I see nothing wrong at all (except the inescusable map) with this small exploratory research project.
For once I disagree strongly with whats up with watts!
Hi Anthony
I think I understand why the more extreme of the environmental groups are against CO2 sequestration. They would hate it if it worked more than if it failed. They are afraid it would allow the industrialists and capitalists to escape their plans. For that sort of activists, CO2 sequestration has no up side, no possible win. If there were a cheap, easy, safe, clean way to deal with carbon, we would not need the activists.
Me, I’m on the side of the industrialists and capitalists. I know who has extended life expectancies. I know who has improved my quality of life and who has the ability to do the same for the portions of the world still in grinding poverty. And it aint the anti-capitalist activists.
Yet, this sequestration thing is new. Your image of the coke bottle is something I think about. I’d like to see the results of a small scale test, then a medium scale test, someplace very far away from my house. Then I’ll think about whether I like the idea for places near my home.
Lake Nyos in Africa released a huge plume of dissolved CO2 in the 1980s killing 1700 people. I hope the carbon sequesterers know what they are doing …
Obviously a Hansen-adjusted map. Guess I don’t live on an island any more.
Carbon sequestration may be an effective technique to enhance oil production. Unfortunately, we will never know if it is worthwhile as long as it is supported by government dollars.
Regards,
Steamboat Jack
Look on the bright side. Congress and energy companies can say they are “doing something.” If that can hold off of decimating our economy with carbon caps (with a trillion dollar price tag) for even a year, it’s money well spent.
Supported by ‘government dollars’ is really supported by picking the pockets of the taxpayer.
C02 is plant food.
I have to agree with Clark on this one. Better they spend a small amount our taxes on these pilot projects than spend massive amounts on destroying our economy and standard of living.
We should figure out a way for cheap “liberal sequestration”.
Just drill for oil, when the fuel technology can compete without subsidies with oil, they will emerge as market leaders, simple as that.
Of course, when the next ice-age threatens to wipe us all out, we can just throw a few Mentos down the drill shafts & hey-presto problem solved!
;o)
In the new government command and control Marxist economy, many solutions, which make no sense, will be pursued to find the perfect disaster.
Do I have this right ? They will collect the CO2, and pump it into the ground. That has to take energy. Electricity. Which comes from power plants that produce CO2. If they use wind power, that just diverts energy from other power plants. Looks like a great way of making things worse.
As Freeman Dyson pointed out, paper at Icecap, undisturbed soils are the best ‘sequestration’ of CO2 imaginable. Ethanol turns enviornmentalism on its head.
As we are all well aware by now, CO2 is magnificently soluble in groundwater. Hopefully, the DOE is creating carboys of appropriately ‘Big Dig’ proportions otherwise this project is truly insane.
CO2 is used very successfully to extract oil from wells with low pressure. It is in injected into the well to increase the pressure and bring up oil that would otherwise not enter the pump inlet. But the CO2 is also mixed into the oil, and does not stay underground to any significant extent.
This project is a waste of money, and is being done to soothe the anxious nerves of those that are too busy earning a living to understand the scam of AGW. It is typical Washington BS. Always look like you are doing something to “solve the problem”, and feed the media a story, of your valiant effort to save the world from the “phantom menace”.
In this case, that means throwing money down a hole, and smiling for the photo-op as you do it. If it has the “right spin”, it is a “win-win”. Except for the average taxpayer, who can never seem to make ends meet. I am currently getting way more government than I can afford, but it is the only part of my budget that I can’t cut back on. In the current economy, this is the kind of thing that will lead to a middle-class revolt. We could use some wisdom from the past, when this kind of reckless waste of public money was solved with a Guillotine.
there’s still time to write a scathing letter to your US Senator or CongresspersonI suggest a more positive approach.
I just think we owe those guys a debt of gratitude for reducing the CO2 levels. Already they are bringing lower temperatures in the Antarctic, and cooling our feverish planet. I suggest we all bow our heads and paean those resourceful carbon traders.