Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions funds $1.5 million research project
University of Victoria
A team of international researchers plan to turn the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into rock by permanently injecting it beneath the Earth’s ocean floor through an ambitious, new research partnership announced today by the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions (PICS) at the University of Victoria.
The $1.5 million, four-year PICS Theme Partnership entitled “Solid Carbon: A Climate Mitigation Partnership Advancing Stable Negative Emissions” brings together researchers from Canada, the United States and Europe. The team aims to combine state-of-the-art technologies in a way that has never been conceived until now, to deliver safe and reliable carbon dioxide (CO2) removal.
The project team includes scientists, engineers and social scientists from the University of Victoria; Ocean Networks Canada (ONC), a UVic initiative; University of British Columbia; University of Calgary; University of California; Columbia University; the University of Washington; and GEOMAR Helmholz Centre for Ocean Research in Germany. Other project partners include K&M Technology Group, and Carbon Engineering in Squamish, British Columbia.
With climate change scenarios showing that negative emissions technologies are needed to limit warming to two degrees Celsius, PICS Executive Director Sybil Seitzinger says the research is timely and urgent.
“Solid Carbon is a highly ambitious project with many barriers to overcome but if this team can advance the technology to a commercially viable stage by mid-century, it could be a major tool to combat climate change,” she says. “Drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are not enough–we need large-scale, permanent removal of excess carbon from the atmosphere.”
ONC President and Chief Executive Officer Kate Moran, Solid Carbon’s principal investigator, explains how proven technologies behind renewable energy production, carbon capture, offshore drilling and carbon mineralization will come together in this feasibility study.
“The vision is to extract CO2 from the atmosphere using a direct air capture technology (developed by Carbon Engineering). Then, using deep ocean technology powered by ocean-based wind and solar energy, inject the CO2 into the subseafloor basalt, where it will mineralize and remain permanently as rock,” she says.
Globally, more than 90 per cent of basalt resides in the ocean where it is widely distributed, making the technology ideal for world-wide use. One of the project’s initial focus areas is modelling and laboratory experiments to demonstrate sequestration of CO2 into ocean basalts that lie beneath ONC’s Cascadia Basin site off the west coast of British Columbia.
Curran Crawford, a professor with UVic’s Institute for Integrated Energy Systems, will lead the investigation into what ocean technology design works best for capturing and then injecting the CO2 into ocean basalt. Prototypes will then be built for further evaluation.
“One key design challenge will be adapting direct air-capture technology that has only been used on land to perform reliably on a floating offshore ocean platform that is powered by renewable energy,” he explains. “Another challenge is that the basalt reservoirs we want to reach are 2,700 metres deep, so our team is engaging with offshore oil and gas drilling experts who have successfully built systems in the deep-sea environment.”
A third component of the project will examine the social, regulatory, and investor acceptance for this project, including gaps in current law. Romany Webb, associate research scholar at Columbia Law School, says existing ocean regulations had not anticipated CO2 sequestration, hence the need for evaluation and future adjustments.
“We need to better understand the laws affecting offshore carbon capture and storage to ensure future projects are conducted in a manner that not only helps to mitigate climate change, but is also safe and environmentally responsible.”
Seitzinger says Solid Carbon has the potential to establish BC as the international technology hub for this climate mitigation solution, and build expertise within Canada as top graduate students are drawn into the project.
The four-year project begins Oct. 1, 2019, with the ultimate goal of designing and delivering a globally applicable ocean-based negative emissions technology by 2050.
Read the FAQ here.
Additional Quotes
Geoff Holmes, director of business development at Carbon Engineering: “Direct air capture, and the broader concept of carbon dioxide removal, is gaining business and policy attention as we all tackle the climate challenge. This work will look at yet another way to deploy these technologies and ideally open up more opportunities to tackle emissions while maintaining affordable energy and competitiveness.”
Meghan Paulson, principal drilling engineer at K&M Technology Group. “I am keen to contribute to this project because the technologies and approaches developed over decades within the oil and gas sector are important to making this solution succeed.”
Murray Rankin, environmental lawyer. “I am delighted to add a Canadian legal perspective to this rock-solid climate change solution. To advance this solution as fast as possible, it is crucial that we forge ahead with regulatory acceptance in parallel with the advancement of the technology. As we’re hearing loudly from kids this week, timely action is needed now.”
The Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions develops impactful, evidence-based climate change solutions through collaborative partnerships which connect solution seekers with experts from BC’s four leading research universities. The PICS Theme Partnership Program supports research on particularly complex–and critically important–climate mitigation and adaptation challenges, and in the process develops legacy partnerships for BC and beyond. PICS is hosted and led by the University of Victoria in collaboration with the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University and the University of Northern British Columbia.
Ocean Networks Canada, an initiative of the University of Victoria, monitors the west and east coasts of Canada and the Arctic to continuously deliver data in real-time for scientific research that helps communities, governments and industry make informed decisions about our future. Using cabled observatories, remote control systems and interactive sensors, and big data management, ONC enables evidence-based decision-making on ocean management, marine safety and environmental protection. ONC also works in collaboration with educators, students, communities and Indigenous peoples on ocean monitoring initiatives along BC’s coast and in the Arctic.
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A media kit containing high-resolution photos, videos and an explainer of the project is available on Dropbox.
I thought “Solid Carbon” was more usually called “Coal”.
White cliffs of Dover. Calcium carbonate.
To those elites at the top, it is called “Diamonds”.
(Hmmm … wonder what they’d say about a “carbon tax” on them?)
Basalt is an igneous rock, as a such does not have much porosity or permeability to inject or store the CO2. Best way to create some is to fracture the potential basalt reservoirs. I hope they don’t have any legal problems.
Picture the scene. it is the monthly prospecting meeting at Loadsaoil Downthere Corp.
“Well Larry what are we going to do to get round the latest Canadian embargo on offshore prospect drilling”?
“Heck Chuck, we got that covered already. The rock solid project is full steam ahead. We can drill as many test wells as we like and the best bit is, the government is helping to pay for it”
“You mean they fell for that guff?”
“Sure did, they even offered to ask Greta to come and sanctify the rigs on her way past in her carbon fibre yacht”
Stay tuned for more from Larry and Chuck as the climate crisis drills ever deeper…
And those oil drilling rigs will be run on renewables…maybe wave generators on the high seas. Can it get any more bizarre than all this? What a waste of intellect and resources.
This is nuts. Nature has been doing this over hundreds of millions of years turing life giving CO2 into carbonate rock, There may come a time when we will have to expend energy turning carbonate rock back into CO2 so that plants can survive on this planet. There is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and there is plenty of scientific rationale that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. Removing all of the CO2 form our atmosphere will starve off all life as we know it but doing so will have no effect on climate. If one really wants to cool the Earth’s surface by changing the atmosphere without killing off all life, the best way would be to remove N2 and in doing so reducing the surface pressure. One would have to remove an awful large amount of N2 but doing so would not kill off life on this planet.
What a colossal waste of fossil fuels.
Rent seekers. All of them.
CO2 injected into the Cascadia subduction zone. What could possibly go wrong?
What a waste of effort. If you want to make rocks to use on the surfac- good for it. Don’t bury them in the ocean. The wild ideas these climate alarmist come up with.
I have a great idea.
Let’s dig up limestone, burn it to CaO then use the CaO to scrub CO2 out of the air.
Then we can bury the CaCO3. Rock solid!
Sure to work. Can I have my $10 million grant please?
I think you forgot to mention that limestone is, primarily, CaCO3.
There is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine.
Perhaps they’ve discovered a perpetual $Green$ machine!
(But if they apply for a patent, they’ll probably discover that Al Gore already invented it.)
Oh, there’s a flaw in the plan? Rats. I was banking on all the subsidies it would bring in.
I know! We can buy carbon offsets for the CO2 emitted in the lime burning step, and get them back again when we bury the CaCO3.
A flaw in the plan?
Since when has a flaw in the plan hindered the $Green Machine$?
It doesn’t have to make sense. It just has to make cash and power as in authority.
(Not the kind of “power” will benefit anybody but themselves.)
We just want to take the CO2 out of the combusted fossil fuel exhaust and turn that CO2 into good paying full time jobs and money.
YouTube: The time of clean coal is now here
A question I have for the Rock Solid Climate Solutions Group is: “How much per ton of CO2 is your projected cost going to be to produce the equipment to collect the CO2 from the atmosphere and then pipe and pump and bury under the ocean floor going to cost?
I recently read a review of the Phase 2.75 estimates for the Carbon Engineering process plant. Seemed like reasonable estimates for the preliminary phase of development.
For a 1mm tonnes per year plant the cost was about $1 B. Plus op costs. I recall that worked out to $80 to $250 per tonne of CO2.
Pretty expensive product. Certainly at the high end of most proposed carbon taxes.
Any plan by humans to remove CO2 from the atmosphere should be subjected to “protection” regulations just as nuclear power plants are required to pass environmental regulations before approval.
Any CO2 sequestration must be shown to be harmless to all living things, including photosynthesis based plant life, algae, trees, bamboo, etc. All species of plant must have representation.
Suggested mottos
“do not impair growth of freedom loving plants”
or
“No sequestration without green representation”
or
“Hell no, we want to grow”
etc.
A board of “plant advocate” experts can then speak on behalf of plant life.
Plants must no longer tolerate abuse by animals.
Act NOW !!!!
All this talk of carbon sequestration has given me the hiccups. I fear if we reduce the level past 280 again they will never go away.
‘The project team includes scientists, engineers and social scientists’
Wut? Social scientists? What is THEIR role?
And what is a social scientist?
One of the silliest ideas I ever heard.
What a colossal waste of time and money trying to starve the earth of life-supporting carbon dioxide!
If these people are stupid enough to think this is a good idea, they should first eliminate their personal carbon dioxide first and stop breathing!
And no, you won’t see a note of sarcasm on this comment; I’m serious as a damn heart attack!!
This idea is similar to Tim Flannery’s hot rocks programme. He wanted to inject water into fractures in hot rocks to create steam to drive turbines. They found the idea to be sound but totally impractical as will these engineers and “scientists”? The engineers and “scientists” I understand but why are there social scientists involved?
I think that we’ve found the Silurian attempt at sequestration:
https://www.livescience.com/massive-underwater-gas-trough-mystery.html
“Mysterious ‘Pocket’ of Underwater Gas Could Contain 50 Million Tons of CO2”
(The Silurians, From “Dr. Who”, were a race of sentient dinosaurs who went into hibernation when they saw the asteroid coming and overset their wake-up timers. Much conflict between them and humans, with each laying claim to the planet – until the Daleks showed up.)
Anytime man begins implementing “Solutions” on a massive government funded scale – they produce problems, orders of magnitude more serious than anything they had originally hoped to resolve. Be afraid, be very, very afraid. Pseudo -Scientists with money will eventually be the death of us all.
True. Geoengineering will kill billions.
The Earth is in a carbon drought. CO2 from human activities have put life back into the atmosphere. We should be thankful for that. Instead, we seek to pull CO2 out of there atmosphere. Our children will ask one day how we could have been so stupid as they will seed the atmosphere artificially with more CO2 in order to optimize living conditions for – every living thing.