Carbon-burying initiative gets mixed response

Date:18/09/03

THE US government snubbed the Kyoto Protocol, but it is cooperating with the EU on another climate initiative - burying millions of tonnes of CO2 under the Earth's surface.

Called "carbon sequestration", the method has received mixed reviews from environmentalists and some scientists, who fear that the carbon will not stay underground for long and seep back out into the atmosphere.

Last spring the EU and the US signed up to a joint "Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum" to promote research in the area. Other countries taking part in the initiative include Australia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Italy, India, Japan, Mexico, Norway, China, Russia and the UK.

One experiment in storing large quantities of carbon dioxide under the floor of the North Sea has proven highly successful, according to a report on website NewScientist.com.

More than five million tonnes of CO2 have been pumped into sandstone under the Sleipner Field since 1996. The greenhouse gas had been separated from extracted natural gas and would normally have been released into the atmosphere.

Andrew Chadwick was among a team of researchers at the British Geological Survey who used seismic images collected before and during the experiment to track where the CO2 had collected. At present, it remains buried underneath a layer of impermeable shale rock, 1,000 metres beneath the seabed.

"This method of carbon dioxide sequestration is probably one of the most powerful techniques we have for the next 50 years for reducing CO2 emissions," said Chadwick. "We believe it is safe, technically feasible and certainly has very little environmental downside."

There are different types of "carbon sequestration", which can be defined as the net removal of CO2 from the atmosphere into long-lived "pools" of carbon.

Besides putting the carbon underground, into deeper subsurface environments, it can be absorbed by various types of terrestrial ecosystems, including above ground biomass such as trees, products with a long useful life created from biomass such as lumber or living biomass in soils, including roots and microorganisms.

The United States is to co-operate with the European Union in burying millions of tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) under the Earth's surface. Environmentalists and some scientists fear that the measure, intended to reduce CO2 emissions, will not work and that carbon will seep back out into the atmosphere. Over five million tonnes of CO2 have been pumped into sandstone in the Sleipner Field since 1996.

http://www.fe.doe.gov/programs/sequestration/cslf/ http://www.fe.doe.gov/programs/sequestration/cslf/

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