• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
  FEATURED
BP Predicts Faster Oil and Gas Decline as Clean Energy Spending Hits $1.1T in 2022 January 31, 2023
Canada Needs Oil and Gas Emissions Cap to Hit 2030 Goal: NZAB January 31, 2023
Ecuador’s Amazon Drilling Plan Shows Need for Fossil Non-Proliferation Treaty January 31, 2023
Rainforest Carbon Credits from World’s Biggest Provider are ‘Largely Worthless’, Investigation Finds January 31, 2023
Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing January 23, 2023
Next
Prev

CO2 storage 'needs tailoring to geology'

July 9, 2013
Reading time: 3 minutes
Primary Author: Tim Radford

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Perhaps we’ll be able to lessen the climate impact of CO2 emissions by trapping and storing them underground. But researchers say potential sites vary so much that each will need separate appraisal.

LONDON, 9 July – Anybody planning carbon capture and storage  (CCS) – one way to burn fossil fuels without releasing greenhouse gases – will have to think long and hard about where to put the carbon dioxide:  long, because it must be kept secure for thousands of years, hard because even the hardest rocks yield under pressure.

  • Be among the first to read The Energy Mix Weekender
  • A brand new weekly digest containing exclusive and essential climate stories from around the world.
  • The Weekender:The climate news you need.
New!
Subscribe

The technology exists and CCS is already one potential amelioration of the greenhouse problem. Energy companies have been condensing carbon dioxide from power station exhausts and gas and oil fields, and finding places to store it, usually deep underground.

But deep burial may not be a permanent solution, which is why James Verdon, an earth scientist at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, and colleagues report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they decided to take a more careful look at three cases of long-term disposal.

Three million tonnes of carbon dioxide (think of this as the exhausts from 500,000 cars) have been buried every year since 2000 in an oil and gas reservoir below Weyburn, in Saskatchewan, Canada.

Around a million tonnes of liquefied CO2 each year is now stripped from natural gas and pumped back into the Sleipner field under the Norwegian North Sea, and in the last seven years almost four million tonnes has been put back deep under a natural gas field at In Salah in Algeria.

In each case, the gas exerts pressure on the surrounding rocks, in the case of the Weyburn field permeating pores and colonising gaps left by more than five decades of oil extraction; what geologists need to know is how the rocks react to this new pressure and whether the gas will migrate.

“There is not likely to be a one-size fits all approach to CCS”

They also need to understand whether there is a history of faulting, and whether the process is likely to trigger earthquakes. This last possibility presents what the researchers delicately describe as a “significant ‘own goal’ from a public relations and political perspective”, so the stakes are high.

The risks also include the opening of existing fractures; damage to the rocks that cap the reservoirs, failures of the wells bored into the storage site and the deformation of the entire geological structure. And since nothing in geology happens in a hurry, the scientists have to calculate probabilities of hazard for thousands of years.

They found enough geomechanical deformation to clear up one point: every deep storage and burial site is likely to be different, and anyone who chooses the CCS solution will have to think carefully.

The authors don’t use the Goldilocks metaphor – not too big, not too hot, just right – from the children’s fairy story, but the intent is clear enough. Each case needs to be considered on its merits; each burial site will need long-term monitoring. To make a difference to total emissions, billions of tonnes must be stored each year, and the industry must find at least 3,000 sites like the Sleipner field.

“Every future CCS site will have a different geological setting, and our study has shown that this can lead to very different responses to CO2 injection,” Dr Verdon warns. “There is not likely to be a one-size fits all approach to CCS.” – Climate News Network



in Climate News Network

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

U.S. Geological Survey/wikimedia commons
Biodiversity & Habitat

Climate Change Amplifies Risk of ‘Insect Apocalypse’

December 1, 2022
43
Alaa Abd El-Fatah/wikimedia commons
COP Conferences

Rights Abuses, Intrusive Conference App Put Egypt Under Spotlight as COP 27 Host

November 14, 2022
26
Western Arctic National Parklands/wikimedia commons
Arctic & Antarctica

Arctic Wildfires Show Approach of New Climate Feedback Loop

January 2, 2023
28

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

Mike Mozart/Flickr

BP Predicts Faster Oil and Gas Decline as Clean Energy Spending Hits $1.1T in 2022

January 31, 2023
316
Gina Dittmer/PublicDomainPictures

Canada Needs Oil and Gas Emissions Cap to Hit 2030 Goal: NZAB

January 31, 2023
192
Doc Searls/Twitter

Guilbeault Could Intervene on Ontario Greenbelt Development

January 31, 2023
130
Ken Teegardin www.SeniorLiving.Org/flickr

Virtual Power Plants Hit an ‘Inflection Point’

January 31, 2023
117
RL0919/wikimedia commons

Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing

January 23, 2023
2.4k
/snappy goat

Rainforest Carbon Credits from World’s Biggest Provider are ‘Largely Worthless’, Investigation Finds

January 31, 2023
92

Recent Posts

CONFENIAE

Ecuador’s Amazon Drilling Plan Shows Need for Fossil Non-Proliferation Treaty

January 31, 2023
60
Victorgrigas/wikimedia commons

World Bank Climate Reforms Too ‘Timid and Slow,’ Critics Warn

January 31, 2023
42
United Nations

Salvage of $20B ‘Floating Time Bomb’ Delayed by Rising Cost of Oil Tankers

January 27, 2023
120
@tongbingxue/Twitter

Extreme Warming Ahead Even as Worst-Case Scenarios Grow ‘Obsolete’

January 23, 2023
340
Rachel Notley/Facebook

Notley Scorches Federal Just Transition Bill as Fossil CEO Calls for Oilsands Boom

January 23, 2023
313
EcoAnalytics

Albertans Want a Just Transition, Despite Premier’s Grumbling

January 23, 2023
322
Next Post

Climate chaos 'needn't happen - IF...'

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}