Carbon Capture & Storage: Blue-Sky Technology or Just Blowing Smoke?

Abstract

Towering 650 feet over the sea surface and spouting an impressive burning flare, it would be easy to mistake the Sleipner West gas platform for an environmental nightmare. Its eight-story upper deck houses 200 workers and supports drilling equipment weighing 40,000 tons. Located off the Norwegian coast, it ranks among Europe’s largest natural gas producers, delivering more than 12 billion cubic feet of the fuel annually to onshore terminals by pipeline. Roughly 9% of the natural gas extracted here is carbon dioxide (CO2), the main culprit behind global warming. But far from a nightmare, Sleipner West is actually a bellwether for environmental innovation. Since 1996, the plant’s operators have stripped CO2 out of the gas on-site and buried it 3,000 feet below the sea floor, where they anticipate it will remain for at least 10,000 years. We believe [CCS] is a viable way to cut global warming pollution. . . . We have the knowledge we need to start moving forward. –David Hawkins, Natural Resources Defense Council Operated by StatoilHydro, Norway’s largest company, Sleipner is among the few commercial-scale facilities in the world today that capture and bury CO2 underground. Many experts believe this practice, dubbed carbon capture and storage (sometimes known as carbon capture and sequestration, but in either case abbreviated CCS), could be crucial for keeping industrial CO2 emissions out of the atmosphere. Sleipner injects 1 million tons of CO2 annually into the Utsira Formation, a saline aquifer big enough to store 600 years’ worth of emissions from all European power plants, company representatives say. With mounting evidence of climate change—and predictions that fossil fuels could supply 80% of global energy needs indefinitely—the spotlight on CCS is shining as brightly as the Sleipner flare. A panel of experts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) recently concluded that CCS is “the critical enabling technology to reduce CO2 emissions significantly while allowing fossil fuels to meet growing energy needs.” The panel’s views were presented in The Future of Coal, a report issued by MIT on 14 March 2007. Environmental groups are split on the issue. Speaking for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), David Hawkins, director of the council’s Climate Center and a member of the MIT panel’s external advisory committee, says, “We believe [CCS] is a viable way to cut global warming pollution. . . . We have the knowledge we need to start moving forward.” Other environmental groups, including the World Resources Institute, Environmental Defense, and the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, have also come out in support of CCS. These groups view CCS as one among many alternatives (including renewable energy) for reducing CO2 emissions. Greenpeace is perhaps the most vocal critic of CCS. Truls Gulowsen, Greenpeace’s Nordic climate campaigner, stresses that CCS deflects attention from renewable energy and efficiency improvements, which, he says, offer the best solutions to the problem of global warming. “Companies are doing a lot of talking about CCS, but they’re doing little to actually put it into place,” he says. “So, they’re talking about a possible solution that they don’t really want to implement now, and at the same time, they’re trying to push for more coal, oil, and gas development instead of renewables, which we already know can deliver climate benefits.”