Printer friendly version
Share
Library and Multimedia
Burying carbon under the sea could be vital to cutting global warming
30 October 2009
AlphaGalileo Foundation
An interview with Professor Stuart Haszeldine, Edinburgh University
‘There is no known alternative to storing carbon under the seabed or below ground if the EU is to achieve its goal of containing global warming to 2 degrees C ', stresses leading geologist Professor Haszeldine.
‘Doing this requires a major, sustained boost in research to refine the technologies needed for carbon capture and storage. The problem is that the public and politicians have not fully grasped the magnitude of the task to remove 80% of our CO2 emissions by 2050. It is vital that we start large-scale experiments now so that carbon capture and storage technologies become cheaper and more energy efficient by 2020 to 2050 when they will be needed ‘off the shelf'. Deep beneath the UK North Sea can provide a natural resource to store Europe's carbon from its power stations, possibly worth as much as £10 billion a year.'
Professor Haszeldine is confident that sub sea storage will be a major player for carbon storage: ‘Coalmines are not a possibility. The rock is fractured permitting leaks and volumes are too small to accommodate the CO2 volumes we will need. Beneath Europe, onshore, there are formations of porous rock filled with saline water which could provide storage of carbon from power plants for hundreds of years. But there are possible risks to displacing the water with CO2 and development is therefore likely to be slow. By contrast the North Sea is amongst the best understood geological rock volumes in the world. The abundant data available makes defensible evaluations of storage capacity possible, and development for storage could benefit from using adaptations of the well-proven hydrocarbon technologies developed in the North Sea.'
Professor Haszeldine's research has shown that the sandstone rock formations beneath the seabed are capable of holding up to 150 billion tonnes of CO2. ‘These are massive storage capacities, probably the equivalent of hundreds of years of carbon from power stations.' He emphasises another potential advantage of such sub sea storage: ‘The public's concerns are likely to be much less than for onshore storage where an extended programme of information and dialogue would be needed, so secure sub sea storage could be provided more quickly'.
The crucial question, on whether the first carbon capture and storage trials will provide a viable future market for the technologies, presents a big challenge according to Professor Haszeldine: ‘ For the next five years the storage market will be small. But from 2013 onwards, the revised EU Emissions Trading Scheme starts to bite and the effect will be that storage will start to become needed on a large scale. Given that EU emissions from power plant are well in excess of 1000 million tonnes of CO2 a year, it would be feasible to charge 10 euros per tonne for good quality storage'. This revenue could support design, manufacturing and offshore industries with around 240,000 jobs, he estimates.
What is the most pressing need for research? ‘While work on capture is underway in many places around the world including at Edinburgh, storage has been under researched. Research needs to continue since the first projects will inevitably reveal technical challenges and skilled people will be needed to solve them. The results will show how we can make processes cheaper and more effective in future. It needs ‘many millions' of funding a year and it is vital that this be sustained for 10 years or more'.
http://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/sccs/storage/