CO-2 Emissions: An Infusion Solution
To help save the environment from the poisonous effects of the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, carbon dioxide emissions will have to be injected into the earth's surface in the future, a scientist said on Tuesday.
"CO-2 sequestration is one of the most powerful tools we have of reducing CO-2 emissions to the atmosphere," Andy Chadwick, principal geophysicist at the British Geological Survey told reporters.
"We need to bring about some quite Draconian cuts in CO-2 emissions," he added on the margins of the British Association for the Advancement of Science annual festival.
Chadwick said the technique of pumping carbon dioxide back into the earth in a manner that prevented it re-entering the atmosphere had been applied and perfected at the Sleipner gas field in the North Sea over the past few years.
Its operator, the Norwegian oil company Statoil, has already injected some five million tons of carbon dioxide into a saline aquifer about a mile below the sea bed.
Time delayed, 3-D seismic surveys had shown the CO-2 was spreading gradually through the vast subterranean reservoir where it was being contained by an impermeable cap of shale and clay.
He said that even if only one percent of the aquifer's storage volume was used to store carbon dioxide it would represent one year's output of CO-2 from the equivalent of 900 coal-fired or 2,300 gas-fired 500 megawatt power stations.
Chadwick said the technique did involve a cost which would obviously rise in the case of a power station and where no suitable geological structure was in the immediate vicinity.
"It is expensive at the moment, but a lot of research is being done to find out how to reduce the costs," he said, suggesting that exhausted oil and gas fields might provide useful storage areas.
He also acknowledged that CO-2 sequestration was by its nature only an intermediate measure until renewable energy sources were developed.
"Carbon sequestration is viewed as an interim measure for the next 50-60 years to effect the major cuts we need to achieve," Chadwick said.