The Morning Call Archives

Copyright © 2009 The Morning Call

ID: 4500805
Publication Date: December 28, 2009
Day: Monday
Page: A1
Edition: FIRST
Section: News
Type: State/Region
Dateline:
Column:
Length: long

Byline: By Christopher Baxter OF THE MORNING CALL

Headline: Curbing CO2 by looking down? **Injecting carbon dioxide

into state's porous subterranean rocks can cut emissions.

Under broken clouds and morning blue sky, a train of weathered hopper
cars rumbled toward the Portland Generating Station, a hulking complex
on the Delaware River with a voracious appetite for coal.

The train's spoils will help generate 500 megawatts of power annually,
lighting living rooms and keeping refrigerators cold. But the fuel also will
produce tons upon tons of carbon dioxide, puffed from the plant's stacks
like two smoldering cigarettes stuck in the ground.

Coal-fired power plants like this one, a decades-old facility in the

northeast corner of Northampton County, and other fossil-fuel industries
account for about half of the roughly 300 million tons of carbon dioxide
sent to the sky above Pennsylvania each year.

With federal environmental officials poised to clamp new restrictions on

the greenhouse gas-- declared hazardous to human health this month --
industry leaders, environmental advocates and even Lehigh Valley
business leaders are asking: How do we rein in a gas we produce every
second of our lives?

Geologists find the answer thousands of feet below the ground, in rock
formations that could be tapped, injected with carbon dioxide and
permanently sealed. Such formations are common across Pennsylvania.
"It's nothing more than thinking about a sponge," said George Love, a
geologic scientist with the state Department of Conservation and Natural
Resources. "You can absorb fluids in the holes of a sponge. Pennsylvania
has those kinds of porous rocks."

A state report on geologic carbon-storing released earlier this year

estimates Pennsylvania's foundation can hold 97.6 billion tons of carbon
dioxide, enough to accommodate the state's emissions for the next 300
years.

Around the world, the process -- known as carbon capture and

sequestration -- is considered a leading solution to abating climate change
by preventing carbon dioxide from reaching the atmosphere. The Obama
administration has committed billions of dollars to support the
technology.

But skeptics, and even those invested in the idea's success, say the process
is years from fruition and raises as many questions as the climate
problems it solves. Is it safe? Who will pay for it? And is out of sight, out
of mind really the best solution?

Environmental groups also fear the technology will be prematurely

considered a solution to the country's reliance on fossil fuels, and perhaps
even be used to promote building new coal-fired power plants.

"We have to find ways to reduce CO2 emissions," said David Masur,
director of PennEnvironment, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group.
"There's concern that this idea diverts attention from that endgame."

Using our planet's basement for storage has been done since at least the
1920s, when the first underground storage field for natural gas was
developed to harbor fuel until higher market demand, said John Harper of
the Pennsylvania Geologic Survey.

About 40 years ago, crude-oil drillers began experimenting with injecting

carbon dioxide into the ground to speed the extraction process. Today,
major enhanced oil-recovery operations exist around the world.

"When they pump the CO2 to push the oil out, the CO2 tends to replace
the oil in the rock," Harper said. "If you can do that, why not simply put
the CO2 underground and don't worry about getting anything out?"

Pennsylvania officials this year released their first report on the state's
potential for CO2 storage. It found four possible underground reservoirs,
or "carbon sinks," in the western and north-central part of the state.
In practice, carbon-dioxide emissions can be captured at the source, such
as a power plant, before being sent into the atmosphere. Once captured,
the gas can be purified, pressurized to near-liquid form, carried by
pipeline and injected underground.

Like any good kitchen container, the best reservoirs would not leak, need
no maintenance and presumably have an infinite lifetime. But finding the
perfect location 3,000 feet below the ground takes extensive research --
and can raise eyebrows.

"We were in Lancaster County in September taking seismic readings, and

a guy pulled up in his pickup truck," said Love of DCNR. "He looked at
me and said, "You're not going to wake up the devil, are you?"'

Full capture and permanent storage of carbon dioxide on a commercial

scale is so far unachieved, but several small-scale demonstrations have
occurred and more are planned, in part with $10 billion in federal stimulus
money.

Air Products and Chemicals of Trexlertown is at the forefront of carbon

capture technology, most recently inking an agreement with the U.S.
Department of Energy to work with an oil refinery in Port Arthur, Texas.

"Companies will want to see [this process] demonstrated at large scale

before it's considered ready for adoption," said Steve Carney, who
manages commercial capture development for Air Products. Still, the
company considers the technology key to future climate change solutions.

Carney acknowledges actual implementation is at least six years away.

Other industry leaders, such as PPL Corp., which operates four coal
power plants and emits about 30 million tons of carbon dioxide annually,
consider the technology 10 to 20 years away.

"A lot of work has to be done…to make it a realistic solution," PPL

spokesman George Lewis said. "More available options we have are
energy conservation and efficiency."

Until the technology's commercial debut, proponents of carbon capture

and storage must answer a litany of questions, perhaps the most pressing
of which is whether the practice can be both safe and cost-effective.

Consider a household garage. If the doors are closed and the car is
running, the oxygen in the room will be replaced in part by carbon
dioxide. That's one of several scenarios people fear: carbon dioxide
leaking from underground containers into basements.
Among others, the simple re-release of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere,
is essentially recycling the gas with no climate benefits.

"Is there a risk associated with leakage of a gas? Of course there is," Love
said. "The goal is to minimize that risk. As a geologist, I would look at the
data, and I would say we could get around the problem. But it's still
ultimately a guess."

Carbon storage would take vast subterranean space -- perhaps hundreds of

square miles -- to be effective, said Jeff Schmidt, director of the
Pennsylvania chapter of the Sierra Club. Finding that space without
undercutting homes would be difficult. Research should be done, he said,
but "the technology is ready for prime time."

A state risk assessment of carbon capture and storage due Nov. 1 has yet
to be released. But the report completed earlier this year raises questions
including effects on air quality, ground stability, liability for leaks and
surface damage and pipeline vandalism.

A bill seeking carbon capture and storage implementation in Pennsylvania

is pending in the state House, sponsored by Rep. Greg Vitali, D-Delaware,
and locally co-sponsored by Rep. Robert Freeman, D-Northampton.

But it has drawn fire from environmental advocates and the coal lobby for
pushing an "unattainable" timeline without consideration for the
associated dangers and cost to taxpayers and ratepayers.

"It's going to take a lot of dollars, more than the state can spend," said
George Ellis, president of the Pennsylvania Coal Association. "The
biggest hurdle is getting the private industry to invest anything, given the
economics right now."

Cost appears the most prohibitive factor. A recent Harvard University

study found one form of capture, excluding storage, could cost 2 cents to
12 cents more per kilowatt hour.

Still, coal users and producers are not averse to the idea, which would
allow them to keep using their fuel while not adding carbon dioxide to the
atmosphere. But environmentalists fear that may be counterproductive.

"We don't want to see an additional commitment to new coal plants when
we don't know if the sequestration will be successful," Schmidt said.
"We're much better served seeking energy efficiency to reduce our overall
need for electricity, and ramping up renewable energy to new levels."