CO2 Burial Schemes Get Green Light

May 23, 2008 -- Fossil fuel burning wouldn't be so bad for the environment, were it not for all of the climate-changing carbon dioxide released in the process.

One solution could be to catch it before it escapes from a coal-burning power plant and lock it away underground. That may sound crazy -- and some say it is -- but carbon capture and storage (CCS) is moving closer to reality.

The U.S. Department of Energy announced earlier this month their funding -- to the tune of $126 million -- of two large-scale carbon storage projects in California and the Midwest. The DOE had previously announced $253.7 million in funding for four others.

"The announcement of these two projects, making a total of six, each with a minimum of a million tons [of CO2 injected underground], is a massive step forward," said Julio Friedmann of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif.

"It's been recognized for a while that there need to be many large-scale injections to learn what it is we need to learn," Friedmann said.

Companies have been injecting CO2 into the ground already, including in efforts to help force the last bits of oil out of oilfields, but the scale does not match what is needed to store CO2 from coal-fired plants.

"The next tier of questions include ones that really require a large, sustained injection," said Friedmann.

These projects will help researchers understand how the Earth's crust deforms as large volumes of CO2 are pumped underground, and which sites are the best for storing CO2, Friedmann said.

The Carbon Conundrum

Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency is drafting regulations to address how sites for CO2 burial should be selected, managed and monitored and to address questions of who pays if something goes wrong. These will be released in July --- a fast track for rulemaking, sources said.

"Having the regulations established is going to be helpful in moving the technology forward," said Sarah Forbes of the World Resources Institute in Washington, D.C.

To Friedmann and Forbes, advancing the use of CCS is critical for addressing climate change.

"You have a new coal plant in China and India being built every single day," Forbes said. "The climate change problem is so big, and you can't address it without addressing coal."