Calculating the Environmental Costs of Carbon Sequestration. By Patrick Barry, Science News, August 13, 2008. "Power plant emissions... may actually be made worse by capturing the CO2 and pumping it deep underground, a new study reported online and in an upcoming International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control suggests. ... Even with [the extra energy it takes to bury CO2], a [carbon-sequestering] plant emits between 71 and 78% less CO2 than a normal coal-fired plant for each unit of usable electricity produced... But when the researchers factored in all the 'cradle to grave' pollution of a CO2-burying plant, emissions of acid rain-causing gases like nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides were up to 40% greater than the total cradle-to-grave emissions of a modern plant that doesn't capture its CO2. [Of course,] if the mining, transportation and other supporting technologies become greener in the future, the pollution penalty for carbon sequestration would be reduced, the researchers note. The decision to substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions is going to be intertwined with decisions about how to deal with these other emissions,' comments Jim Dooley, an expert in carbon sequestration at the Joint Global Change Research Institute in College Park, Md., and one of the lead authors for a major 2005 report on carbon sequestration by the IPCC. That IPCC study concluded that nearly all properly buried CO2 would probably remain underground for centuries."
2008-08-14
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