MIT: BURY YOUR CO2

U.S. urged to bury carbon dioxide from coal
Timothy Gardner, March 14, 2007 (Reuters via Yahoo News)

- Top coal-burning countries like the United States should start burying carbon dioxide emissions from power plants…
- The U.S. government should help fund up to five demonstration projects that entomb emissions of the main gas scientists link to global warming, said the [Massachusetts Institute of Technology study titled “The Future of Coal”]…
- The projects would help the power industry begin to understand which geologic formations are best for burying the gas…[and] would cost less than $1 billion total.

- "If we don't have carbon capture and sequestration coal has a very bleak future," John Deutch, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency under Bill Clinton, MIT professor, and co-author of the study, said…
- The United States, which has enormous reserves of cheap coal and gets 50 percent of its power from the fuel, has not agreed to regulate emissions of heat-trapping gases -- unlike all other developed countries save Australia. But the formation of a national plan in the world's top greenhouse gas emitter looks more likely as U.S. 2008 presidential contenders in both parties favor mandatory regulations, and states on both the East and West coasts form plans…
- Energy companies in Texas already inject CO2 from natural formations into oil and gas fields to boost energy production. But the study said those reservoirs do not have the capacity to store the volume of the gas from power plants that would lower overall U.S. emissions and begin to tackle climate change. It said saline formations about 1 kilometer underground, which are widespread throughout the country, have the most potential to store the gas…

- [Coal-burning power plant emissions]…could be much more troubling than the nuclear industry's lack of foresight on radioactive waste disposal, one of the problems that has slowed further U.S. development in that industry, [Deutch] said…
- The technology to capture emissions at power plants is more expensive than burying the gases…
- The report recommended that China, which is building about two 500-megawatt coal plants a week, build at least two demonstration sequestration projects…China also has widespread underground saline formations, but…[India] does not…
- The report was financed by MIT, the Better World Fund, the Pew Charitable Trusts and Shell Oil Co. among others.