18 February 2009 | Luca Del Buono

 

As the U.S. Department of Energy's first-of-its-scale project in carbon burial launches, interest in carbon burial and sequestration is at an all time high. Many nations wish that there was an alternative to traditional emissions cuts, which can hinder growth, and could reduce their net contribution to atmospheric carbon.

Carbon sequestration could provide just such a solution. By burying the substance in underground cavities or in carbon rich soils in swamps or other sites, the net contribution of a country to emissions can be reduced.

And while many in the environmental community no longer like the idea, pointing out that such deposits could be easily released and don't solve the overall problem, the movement to adopt carbon sequestration still has powerful supporters.

Drilling began this week in Illinois on the DoE project, which will bury one million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the ground by 2012. The project is the first of its scale in the U.S., and while still small compared to total U.S. emissions has the potential to grow much bigger.

Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky have enough underground space to store approximately 100 billion tons of CO2, enough to completely negate 25 years of emissions at the current rate, if fully filled.

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Source: Daily Tech

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