Well, it’s a start. Australia’s first carbon sequestration experiment is about to be conducted. CO2 extracted from natural gas is going to be pumped back down an empty gas well in Western Victoria.
Greens Senator Christine Milne has a bit to say about the project, most of it not very complimentary. She argues that it’s trivial in size, doesn’t actually tackle the hard part of the process (extracting and purifying CO2 when burning or processing coal), and doesn’t add much to knowledge gained from similar projects already conducted overseas. I don’t know enough to comment on the last one, but the first two comments are correct.
But that said, if we can’t store captured CO2 cheaply, safely, and without further damaging the environment, the ability to capture it is redundant. So experiments like this are necessary. And it’s quite possible that, even if we make a massive switch to renewable energy, we’ll still have to artificially remove CO2 from the atmosphere, and we’ll need to be able to dispose of the resulting carbon dioxide. Furthermore, the costs are a piddle in the ocean.
But given that the federal and state governments are all essentially taking massive bets on CCS as the miracle technology that gets them out of tough decisions on energy policy, you’d hope that this trial is followed up bloody soon with something closer to a complete case study.
This is all just smoke and mirrors, so the Greenhouse Mafia can continue to avoid doing anything.
“Massive bet” is closer to what it is. Worries me that Australia is close to the forefront of this technology. That says to me that nobody much else is taking it too seriously.
It’s a pity they’ve been chopping down so many trees in that wonderful rainforest over the last decades. It’s now a pale shadow of the Otways I spent so much time in as a kid. Mind you, the sequestration doesn’t address the issue of the volatile organics released by living rainforests (tropical or temperate, but particularly oily eucalypts) that have been said to promote rain, not just trap it.
I’m with Robert on this one - we absolutely need this technology yesterday. The risks of climate change are so serious that we have to use all of the technologies that can contribute to sustainable outcomes and all of the behavioural/economic levers also.
The issue of leakage should not be seen as a show-stopper for this technology. Otherwise we would not have natural gas (and indeed CO2 at great pressures already in the Otway/Gambier Basin). There is strict monitoring, and even modest leakage will be visible to all as a plume because of the pressures involved. Some sites will be okay and some not. There are likely many power plants operating that are not proximate to suitable sites.
To suggest that it is a smokescreen is missing the point. It could be used as such, but can we turn around our energy system as it needs to be in the next couple of decades without it? I don’t think so.
We probably need to reframe society’s relationship with the economy and environment and properly factor long-term risk into both our economic system and the notion of the social contract but that’s a highly fraught debate that should not get in the way of sensible testing of various technologies.
Martin Ferguson’s comments in the Oz yesterday were the most infuriating bald-faced lies I’ve heard in years. [link] Does he honestly believe that anyone buys into the argument that we don’t have choices when it comes to building power stations?
The question is not whether or not we need this technology, but how big a part it should play in the mix. There are shades of ‘electricity so cheap it will be unmetered’ in the style of techno-optimism exhibited by these arseclowns.
We have no idea what impact of pumping vast amounts of CO2 into the terrestrial biosphere will have over the long run, and we may well be creating much bigger problems than we’re solving here. This is a navel gazing version of the colonial ‘dead heart’ mentality.
Besides, who pays if this stuff leaks/damages other ecosystems etc.?
One really annoying aspect of this is that funding of carbon capture and storage research continues to draw the lion’s share of public funding for energy-related research compared to renewables. The coal producers have profited mightily from the activities which produce the negative externality of excessive CO2 emissions, and so it is only equitable - and economically rational - to ask them to internalise some of this externality by funding the clean coal research themselves, thereby freeing public funds for renewables research.
Particularly, Paul, as it will be wasted money. This has very little chance of being at all useful, so should not have significant chunks of public money spent on it.
Robert, as far as scrubbing the atmosphere of CO2 goes, I reckon use it to make plastic (like Craig Venter is doing). That way the carbon is both sequestered from the environment and useful to humans at the same time.
Re #5 Marn Ferson has been skeptical on climate change for years so would probably be happy with policy lite. There is of course, when opening some new technology the need for the politician to emphasise that it’s going to save the world and a reason why we can keep on keeping on with wot got us into the mess in the first place. Remember, we have to keep the electorate relaxed and comfortable.
I suppport Peter Cook’s comments re the necessity of the technology. My view is that we need it for what we have and that is independent of whether or not any new coal-fired power is put up. In response to the criticism re funding priorities (geosequestration vs renewables) - it shouldn’t be either/or - if we only have enough funding for a few select techs it ain’t enough.
We need the lot.
If risk is properly factored into the market, many non fossil fuel technologies will be economicaly viable, but they need support to get to economies of scale.
As always the question is: What would wbb do?
Fossil fuel tech could be scaled down progressively by gov fiat - that’d give renewables a kick along without subsidy.
Win bloody win.
Chumpai: we use a lot of plastic. We produce several orders of magnitude more CO2.
The Garnaut Review Emissions Trading discussion paper discusses CCS, and public spending on assistance for CCS as a form of structural adjustment for the coal industry.
The way I see it, there are several possibilities for how CCS technologies will pan out:
* They may one day be successful and widely deployable;
* They may be highly unsuccessful, or worse, the safety risks from the possibility of rapid escape may be too high;
* They may be successful in a limitied number of cases, and somewhat expensive.
We need to take all of the above possibilities into account (I personally see the last two possibilities as the most likely). I am somewhat concerned that both the Garnaut Review and Labour government policy are picking CCS as a winner, which could be incredibly expensive if CCS doesn’t go as planned. By all means spend some public money on CCS, but no more than on other low emission technologies, e.g. wind, solar thermal, solar photovoltaic, wave power, geothermal, smart meteres, better buildings, technologies to reduce emissions from livestock and agricultural soils etc etc.
The successful emergence of CCS technologies may mean we could one day export fossil fuels without adverse consequences provided the carbon dioxide is captured and stored. I do not see this as a reason for government assistance, rather I see it as a reason for the coal industry to spend more on CCS RD&D. We should also keep in mind that CCS may be just as appropriate for other fossil fuels, such as natural gas.
Roger Jones @4:
That’s really the point, isn’t it? The technology simply wasn’t available yesterday, isn’t available today and, according to the most reliable estimates, including MIT, Thomas Kuhn from Edison power and other major coal advocates, is not going to be available commercially until 2025, 2030 or later.
CCS is never going to be zero emissions. It will always have 5-15% of the emissions of coal currently. That being the case, It’s no good as a long term, large-scale solution. If it could be bolted on now to massively reduce coal emissions, maybe it would be valuable as a transition (if you forget all the other issues), but it can’t. It’s not ready.
So that’s where it is left. It might be a valuable transition option, but it won’t be ready in time to be an effective transition even according to its big advocates.
What’s the point? Surely we should leapfrog straight to renewables and efficiency.
david bath, rainforest hasn’t been harvested in Victoria for more than twenty years, at least. Meanwhile, the Otways remain very wet (though really scarily ready to burn.
As for the CCS, I’m quite confident it will work and be entirely safe. I’m just very sceptical about it’s cost versus the alternatives, and it’s ability to deliver at the scale and in the timeframes necessary. Meanwhile, it’s distracting us from other necessary steps.
Tim (#13),
my view about the urgency of the need to reduce emissions is driven by work by myself and others on how quickly risks need to be reduced given the growth path the world is on at present (not-withstanding sub-prime blips).
I don’t think we can do without transitional technologies such as CCS. Leap-frogging is all very well, but I don’t believe we are going to do that either in the short term (unless China does it and monkey see, monkey do). There are too many passive actors, not to mention the hostile ones.
I’m going to hope for and work towards, but not rely on, large-scale behavioural change. We aren’t fully utilising the technologies we have now - any technology that requires wholesale change in social paradigms requires us to understand the social drivers of change much better than we do now. This is relevant to the implementation of any technology including PVs, solar thermal etc etc.
Even if CCS is not used on coal, there are contracts written for LNG and oil that are decades out. CCS can be used on these, and it will be ready in less than 25 years. I cannot see a situation where the taxpayer will buy out all the investments in wells, pipelines and the forward contracts, but I can see investment in off-set and transition. There are better things to buy out, but I’ll leave exactly what up to others.
My work is informed not only by the motive of getting solutions fit for the true believers, but the hard nosed, sceptical business types. Risk remains the best framework within which to do this but the demand for long-term environmental outcomes needs to be built into upfront pricing as a “market good” rather than a cost. I think this is a long-term goal and want as large a range of options at hand as possible in the meantime. This will require R&D on technology where we can’t reliably predict the outcomes, in addition to a great deal of work on the social aspects of change. Because we only have a hazy idea of what we’re doing as a society regarding climate change, we can’t be too picky about choosing only the purest solutions.
Furthermore, Tim, even if we jump holus-bolus to zero-carbon energy options, we may still need to artificially scrub carbon from the atmosphere to undo the damage we’ve done already.
Mr Merkel,
Regret a possible side issue, but I am a little unclear about ‘purifying’ CO2 ?
How and why does one purify CO2 ?
Thanks your guidance
MMLJ: In general, if we’re speaking about “purifying” CO2, it means taking something that contains a variety of gases - for instance normal air, or the exhaust of a power station - and separating out the CO2, leaving you with pure or near-pure CO2 which can then be disposed of (as is being done here), and a mix of gases with little or no CO2 left in it which you can then safely release into the atmosphere. Normal air contains around 0.37% CO2 (it used to be about 0.28% before we started dumping it into the atmosphere). The exhaust of a power station contains a lot more, but it’s still only a small fraction of the gas, which is mostly nitrogen.
The scientists are working on a number of different processes for doing this; they work, at least at a laboratory scale, but are quite expensive.
Does this answer your question?
That’s from the Oz article liked to by dk.au at 5.
People like Gore and Hansen are depending on CCS playing a role. If it doesn’t we need to be a whole lot more pessimistic.
Background Briefing on Radio National on Sunday morning is going to look at geoengineering the climate.
Meanwhile we have a
dinosaurclimate sceptic and coal power advocate in Michael Costa in the NSW Government.Elsewhere Geodynamics has completed its open flow test. This means they have pumped water down into the hot rocks, retrieved it through another well 500 metres away, cooled it in an open pond and pumped it down again.
That’s according to their site.
I heard the CEO interviewed the other day. He reckons they can pay for the transmission lines themselves and be competitive with a carbon price of about $20. He also says they should be able to produce 40% of Australia’s energy requirements from their 4 tenements. There are about 30 companies working on hot rocks.
But it’s not in the bag. He said there would be “unknown unknowns” for sure.
Here’s the global Top Ten power sector CO2 polluters. Per capita Australia shits it in.
# 1 United States 2,790,000,000
# 2 China 2,680,000,000
# 3 Russia 661,000,000
# 4 India 583,000,000
# 5 Japan 400,000,000
# 6 Germany 356,000,000
# 7 Australia 226,000,000
# 8 South Africa 222,000,000
# 9 United Kingdom 212,000,000
# 10 South Korea 185,000,000
[link]
Its hard to think of anything more foolish than carbon sequestration. If we have been forced into the expensive process of capituring the CO2 in the first place then why set up an extremely dangerous hazard with it? CO2 is a valuable fertiliser and can be used as a fire enxtinguishing agent and an industrial coolant.
Whats missing from this thread is any evidence for why the CO2 ought to be captured in the first place. All of the science points to cooling and none whatsoever to even the remote possibility of substantial warming. The impression has to be that this website dissalows all such considerations of actual science. Which suggests the advocates are exercising an intention towards malicious damage. Not unlike those that point lasers at pilots.
Brian, thanks for that, particularly the geoengineering thing.
As for Geodynamics (usual disclosure: I own a few shares in it), yeah, it seems that their flow tests are making progress, but there’s a big difference between running a test for a week and reliably producing energy for years on end.
As to their costs, are they taking into account the cost of running multi-gigawatt transmission lines all the way to the grid?
The cost of transmission lines is $1 million per kilometre. Joining Roma in Qld and Olympic Dam would cost $1 billion and would open up the huge hot rock potential of the Cooper Basin to the National Electricity Market.
One billion for a zero CO2 game changer like this is chicken feed. The next federal budget surplus will be $18 billion, for example.
Robert (yes, I own a few shares too, which I classify as speculative) I’d be fairly confident of their sums on transmission costs, given the experience of the current CEO and with Origin on board.
But you are right in suggesting it’s early days. They are still short of what they call “proof of concept”. I gather they are going to put some dyes down and study “well behaviour”, then build a 1MW plant, then 50MW and try to scale up from there.
wbb, thanks for the link.
The double talk and bullying of the safety cop on the beat namely the Norway Petroleum Safety Authority has already begun as reported by me below last Friday. One can smell the industrial imperatives already a la Karen Silkwood, and one would have to be pretty naive to think otherwise after reading the Norway PSA until someone jumped on that expert speaking too frankly.
I was born and grew up in Warrnambool close to the CCS demonstration plant, hence the added interest to research the potential for catastrophic failure/bleeding out and lethal ponding of my compatriots down there. It’s simply not resolved, and probably never will be, or otherwise it would be an open book including via google.
Not one of you above, or soon to be ex (great and good) Senator Bartlett have mentioned the cancelling of the Future Gen billion $ project by those (not) very greenie W Bush regime: As per Washington Post here
[link]
Rather than a cheap shot, this surely is a reality check, they didn’t see value in going big on this, while California is going gang busters on renewables sector etc.
So at best in SW Victoria, after the Norway safety regulator warning, it’s an important experiment that will waste some money and time, and at worst it will kill many people, but either way it’s likely to prove fruitless.
:
“Friday, 4 April 2008
Energy Minister Ferguson gambling on safety of CO2 carbon capture after Norway report?
Mood: blue
Topic: globalWarming”
at [link]
And 7:30 Report tonight puts CCS pretty much to bed, too, Tom. Even the coal industry spokesppl didn’t seem too excited about it. We are stuffed.
New post examining this issue up at Greensblog after last night’s 7.30 report. Comments welcome as always.
Picking losers.
The problem with underground carbon storage, like nuclear power, is it is based on the assumption that the status-quo must be preserved, our massive over consumption of energy and everything else must be preserved.
Despite the massive destruction (not just greenhouse gas) of our current mode of industrialised growth economy and the fact that humanity has never, ever lived like this before, the dominant assumption is that the way things are at present is a given, the baseline for all our schemes and plans.
We must return to an ecological balance with the earth or we will surely perish. Bandaids such as carbon storage and nuclear power only prolong (slightly) our capacity to engage further in a destructive way of life and global economy.
It seems to me that the only reason greenhouse reduction has become a mainstream priority is because of the reality of peak oil and the need for new forms of energy to maintain the massive level of production, consumption, profits and affluence of a minority of the earths population.
Sustainable economics has clearly become a higher priority of governments and corporations than sustainable ecology. Until we change to a priority of ecological sustainabilty all our schemes (even if they do eventually work) are just redesigning the deck chairs on the Titanic.
p.s. Robert M. (or anyone else more in touch with the science than I am)
I am most curious to hear your response to Abdul @21….
“All of the science points to cooling and none whatsoever to even the remote possibility of substantial warming”.
The denialists have made a lot of noise about the earth’s recent cooling but I have not yet heard a scientific explaination of this by global warming science.
Andrew Bolt drew my attention to the following link and for that reason alone I hope to find some refute. But from what I can make of all the scientific gobbldey-gook, the earth does indeed seem to be cooling at the moment???
[link]
John: I haven’t seen a detailed scientific response, but it seems to me to be yet another example of trying to draw conclusions from a a single high or low data point.
Andrew Bolt drew my attention to the following link and for that reason alone I hope to find some refute. But from what I can make of all the scientific gobbldey-gook, the earth does indeed seem to be cooling at the moment???
The science behind the link is based entirely on a very poor understanding of the different temperature trends and reference periods used to calculate the temperature anomalies.
Tamino destroys it here.
I don’t find Real Climate to be very well organised, but they are credible to my mind. I am sure they have a response to that particular talking point. Sorry, you’ll have to search for it: [link]
Is it a poor understanding or deliberate obfuscation? Bolt did a number on the Greens a year back or so when an air-conditioner broke down in a a public school or some such. And after reading as much of Ann Coulter’s Godless as I could without throwing up I know there are people who’re willing to flate out lie.
>
As in deliberately, knowingly, with malive aforethought.
>
Not sayin’ Bolt’s a bullshitartist. Just sayin’.
I’m pretty sure that Bolt just saw something that attacked global warming and jumped on it - I don’t credit Bolt with enough knowledge to realise that the analysis is complete crap. The author of the piece knows just enough maths to make himself look authoritative (and catch Bolt out), but not enough to know that he’s wrong.
It’s not about knowledge, it’s about technique. If you want to be a professional controversialist buy one of these - [link]
Watts addresses some of the issues that Tamino raises in his second post, including admitting inadequezies of the first. (linked from first one)
He is promising a third post too.
Watts is not part of the denier brigade. He was genuinely concerned about being used. He got Bolt and I believe blogs around the world to retract conclusions attributed to him and his analyses.
Yes Paul @6, it is very frustrating to so much blind faith and vast sums of our money shunted into risky coal R&D exercise and PR about “not so clean coal”.
The Americans have just given up their CCS project associated with a power station.
The Otways project extracts CO2 from natural gas and will attempt to sequester it - which is done in some oil/gas production areas already. It is basically not relevant to the pipe dream of using CCS for coal-fired power stations.
IF they can scrub the carbon dioxide from the aftermath of burning coal AND capture AND store it, this technology will be very expensive to develop AND operate (requiring MORE coal to be burnt) AND it will not be suitable for retrofit to all our existing coal fired power stations.
I say let the industry make whatever investment they see fit, but public money should not be going into this elaborate smoke screen. And the twits who are flogging it should leave politics and go into carpet sales.
John Tracey - I had a quick look at Anthony Watt’s site and found this.
On the basis of a single monthly data point in a time series dataset of several decades being lower than the long-term trend, Watt is making several strong claims against AGW. This is despite the fact that the site from which he obtained these data carries the disclaimer “The last year of data are still preliminary”. Watt appears to be oblivious to the principle of scientific caution.
In short, beware! This is cherry-picking at its most egregious.
When Abdul said this at 21 I concluded that he was seriously deluded and it would be a waste of time arguing. Not being a scientist it’s not my place to debunk this stuff, but I can sometimes point to what real scientists and more qualified commenters say. But it’s not clear which argument he was propounding.
1. The climate is always changing and recent changes are lost in the noise
2. Warming stopped in 1998
3. It’s all due to cosmic rays which are having a wave effect and the wave is due to turn down
4. The planet has been cooling for the last 50 million plus years.
5. The current interglacial has been going for a long time and is due to end.
All these have been dealt with at various times on various sites and to take the discussion over them again here is really thread derailment.
It certainly is, Brian.
I value the effort you (and Robert Merkel) put into this subject at this site and do not wish you to waste any energy/time on Bolt’s victims. The marginalise themselves quite adequately and do not require rebuttal.
Speaking of Geodynamics though, buying a few shares in the company is a good way to develop interest/knowledge in the area. Which leads me to ask why there is no share-market discussion at LP. Got most other areas covered! Who’s gonna play Alan Kohler here?
I’m a bad investor - think it’s a game - buy sell, buy sell - then lose interest. I’ll just stick to football and election tipping.
I bought some GDY after an ABC TV story on them 18 months ago. They went up a little bit. What did I do? Sell. Since then they’ve gawn up to blazes, of course. Reckon they might be at the right price again now, though. (Worthless advice, believe me.)
wbb, one of the sayings is that “You’ll never go broke taking a profit”.
Then there’s “Bottom pickers end up with dirty fingers”.
And “You should always leave a bit on the table for the next bloke”.
And “When a short term trade goes bad, don’t turn it into a long term investment”.
Plus “The share market is the only place where people regularly buy high and sell low”.
Essentailly you need an investment philosophy, and if a trader you need a formal trading strategy, written down and implemented with discipline.
But to answer your question, I perhaps could and would if I had time.
For myself, while I’m interested in the share market and own a few shares, from all I’ve read:
a) the day-to-day fluctations in the stock market are given far too much attention.
b) the efficient market hypothesis - and the implication that trying to “beat the market” over the long term is at best very, very difficult - is more true than most stock pickers care to admit.
Adrian, here is the low tech version. The ex-creationist Glenn Morton writes:
John,
Unfortunately, when you address the issues the whole point of his first post falls apart. His first post was utter shite because he didn’t realise the significance of how temperature anomalies are calculated. Which for someone who claims to be auditing the temperature record is like a self proclaimed Roman historian being unaware of Julius Caesar.
Alas, his third post has been delayed for the foreseeable future as his “attention being turned to other more important work”.
Watts is a joke. He seems to have some technical knowledge of statistics, but when he tries to implement it, his analysis show a complete and utter lack of understanding of the basics. I’m not sure if he is dishonest or simply clueless, but for whatever reason, trust his analysis at your own peril.
Do you have a link to Bolt’s retraction?
If I’d been mauled by Tamino in that manner I’d keep my head down.
Agree with both.
One of the major broking houses did a bit of research and compared
1. Broker stock picks
2. Ordinary client
3. Random picks
They concluded that they all did the same on average. The sting in the tail is that as an ordinary person unless you put in a lot of effort or you’ll probably do worse than that.
But I heard of a brain surgeon who spent 3 hours every Saturday morning being a weekly trader and ignoring the market at other times. He had a working capital of $1 mill and made $900,000 in a year.
But NB he was by definition pretty smart and he did have coaching.
Ken,
Here is the Bolt article with the update (not really a retraction) [link]
From memory???, i think Bolt changed the wording of the original post a bit too.
see also “update and caveat” on Watts site. [link]
Given the inadequacies of Watts first post and his adjustments to the second, is his assertion that the earth has been going through an unusually rapid cooling period in the last 12 months correct? From what i can gather the adjustments seem to confirm this. Please correct me if I have read this wrong. Do not the 4 temperature measurements indicate recent rapid cooling, before Watts even started messing with the info?
I do not embrace Watts stuff with the misrepresentative glee that Bolt has. I just find it curious and I guess i seek an explaination other than Watts is a fool. Robert M’s response @ 30 makes sense…”but it seems to me to be yet another example of trying to draw conclusions from a a single high or low data point.” But the low data point does seem to exist, doesn’t it?
I believe this stuff is relevant to the topic of this post because it is science that determines emmission reduction targets which determine investment in such things as carbon storage.
Without getting too philosophical, science can be wrong. It is almost always wrong as yesterdays information is replaced by today’s. It is not a firm foundation for social and economic policy, especially when it is as hypothetical as climate science is.
Anomalies such as the recent cooling (if this is the case) as well as super-anomalies such as tipping points and feedback loops makes science incapable of accurately predicting anything about future climate. Recent ice melts have already made current estimates redundant. Emission reduction targets, the basis of underground carbon, is just pinning the tail on the donkey.
My concerns @28 are extended to the science which itself is a key pillar of the status-quo. The nature and direction of scientific enquiry has been within the cultural givens of affluent growth economy. The funding that goes into carbon storage and clean coal research is a clear case in point. More subtley, climate science has been focused on acceptible limits and goals for the affluent growth economy. Climate science and reduction targets provide an artificial legitimacy to the causal factor of the problem which is the affluent growth economy itself, in particular the coal industry.
Sorry John, I’ve been talking past you. I thought that you were referring to Watt’s histograms at the linked site. Which are a load of rubbish.
The short answer to the recent cooling, is that they are probably just a random fluctuation. There have been similar events regularly in the past.
While science can be wrong, I see it as tending towards the truth. Science builds on itself, constantly using old results to develop and test new theories. As such, the foundations of significant theories tend to be very sound (if they weren’t the new work would have exposed problems early on). Scientific revolutions are very rare, and 99.999999999% of science is evolutionary. In the case of global warming, two key foundations (that greenhouse gases absorb radiation at certain frequencies and that the earth emits radiation at these frequencies) are extraordinarily strong.
Climate models already have a good track record of predictions. For example, for a significant period of time satellite measurements showed that the troposphere was cooling whereas climate models predicted warming. It was later discovered that the satellite data was being incorrectly interpreted and the models were right all along.
I would strongly disagree with this. I don’t see anything wrong with a “affluent growth economy” as a general principle. Rather the opposite - an affluent growth economy should be a goal. If climate science that reduce the negatives of such an economy, then more power to it.
Not really. That’s not a scientific response, but the political response of a conservative Australian govt that was anticipating an economic threat to an export commodity.
From a scientist’s perspective, its extremely frustrating to see such an overwhelming proportion of scarce funding being directed to this technology.
John, to get the simple story on 2007 have a look at this site.
Also:
If you look at the five year mean and what happened to it in the 1940s, then for the next 30 years, and from 1980 plus, and finally consider where we are now compared to 1910, it’s way too early to start calling AGW off.
There’s a very thorough debunking of this in one of the comments here: [link]
This is a very big claim:
I’m not competent to comment. Anyone else?
Brain, a very big claim indeed.
My semi-competent opinion (not a geologist nor a climatologist): Eight years of data extrapolated to eternity should not be regarded with much confidence in the absence of ancillary evidence. Two key points spring to mind: 1) what prior knowledge exists regarding the permeability of the overlying geological strata to molecules of the size and dipolarity of CO2?, and 2) what is the minimum detectable CO2 leakage rate for the sensors used to collect these data?
There are also all the assumptions re the very long-term integrity of the geological formation into which the CO2 is injected. And the fact that natural gas and/or oil may still to be found within these strata does not mean that there have not been any losses to the atmosphere or to the overlying water bodies.
Much as one might wish that this was a viable method of reducing CO2 emissions, I’d be wanting much more detail before coming to any sort of a positive opinion about the suitability of the Utsira aquifer for geo-sequestration of CO2.
Thanks, TFA. That makes sense.
David, which comment contains the ” very thorough debunking”? I see a whole lot of assertions, but no ” very thorough debunking”.
AFAIK, the permeability of rocks in capping rocks is fairly accurately determined by well engineers in most (all) wells. In order to extract oil/gas safely, you need to have a good idea of the strata. I presume that the Sleipner project goes above and beyond the basic requirements. Perhaps more importantly, whereas the permeability of storage layer can be difficult to determine accurately, the permeability of the capping layer is more easy (if you can determine it easily, it’s probably too high).
The CO2 is detected by seismic monitoring. This indicates that the CO2 is no where near the surface. When injected into the sandy layer the CO2 rises until it hits a thin layer of mudstone. There it accumulates and spreads until it finds a hole in the mudstone where it starts to rises again. This happens until it reaches the top of the sandy layer where it stops and starts to spread at the shale layer. There has been no observed penetration of the shale layer.