Some notes and excerpts from “Preparing to Capture Carbon”, by Daniel P. Schrag in this week's edition of Science.
“Carbon sequestration from large sources of fossil fuel combustion, particularly coal, is an essential component of any serious plan to avoid catastrophic impacts of human-induced climate change. Scientific and economic challenges still exist, but none are serious enough to suggest that carbon capture and storage will not work at the scale required to offset trillions of tons of carbon dioxide emissions over the next century. The challenge is whether the technology will be ready when society decides that it is time to get going.”Carbon sequestration from large sources of fossil fuel combustion, particularly coal, is an essential component of any serious plan to avoid catastrophic impacts of human-induced climate change. Scientific and economic challenges still exist, but none are serious enough to suggest that carbon capture and storage will not work at the scale required to offset trillions of tons of carbon dioxide emissions over the next century. The challenge is whether the technology will be ready when society decides that it is time to get going.”
…unlike petroleum and natural gas, which are predicted to decline in total production well before the middle of the century, there is enough coal to last for centuries, at least at current rates of use, and that makes it cheap relative to almost every other source of energy. Today coal and petroleum each account for roughly 40 % of global CO2 emissions. But by the end of the century, coal could account for more than 80 %…
…So developing and deploying the technologies to use coal without releasing CO2 to the atmosphere may well be the most critical challenge we face, at least for the next 100 years, until the possibility of an affordable and completely nonfossil energy system can be realized.
Hi David !
You will probably think that I disagree with all you citations surrounding green issues. That's not the case but it's useful to precise some elements… and give my opinion 🙂
Sequestration is useful for localised large quantity of carbon : for example coal plants or oil extraction from tar sand. However it's just a part of all the carbon we produce. And we don't know what's the long term effect of such a technology. It's like burrying nuclear waste, it sounds like a good temporary solution but is it safe in the long run ?
I have no doubt that sooner or later we will develop large scale sequestration project and other geoengineering technologies. However they present a much higher risk than decreasing the “production” of carbone. Setting a price on carbone (through tax or a carbone market like in Europe) is for now the best solution and carbone sequestration should not be seen as a way to earn carbon credits.
(By the way, in the first paragraph you have twice the same sentence)