CAPTURING CARBON IN CANADA

There's lots of oil in Canada's sands; its just going to cost a lot of money and require a lot of energy to turn it into the dope of our dependency (gasoline).

Canada looks at large-scale carbon capture
Bernard Simon, March 10, 2007 (UK Financial Times)
- Canada is planning to store carbon dioxide produced by industry and power stations underground…

- Stephen Harper, the prime minister, has announced the creation of a government task force to recommend ways of implementing large-scale carbon capture. The group will be led by Steve Snyder, chief executive of TransAlta, Alberta's biggest power utility…
- The jump in the oil price over the past three years has drawn investors to bitumen-like oil sands in northern Alberta…However, enthusiasm for oil sands projects' commercial benefits has been tempered by concern over their environmental damage, as well as spiralling production costs and labour shortages…
- Carbon storage technology, also known as carbon sequestration, is thought to hold greatest promise for fossil fuel-powered power stations, fertiliser producers and other industrial plants that produce large amounts of carbon dioxide.

- The goal is to capture emissions then pipe the CO2 to a storage site. In the case of the oil sands, it would be pumped into depleted conventional oilfields.
- The government estimates that Canada has the potential to store up to 9,000 megatonnes of carbon dioxide, equal to more than 11 times Canada's total annual greenhouse gas emissions.
- Several North American and European agencies are working on a pilot project in Saskatchewan, where carbon dioxide