Carbon sequestration: Buried trouble (Nature magazine, subscription required)

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http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100217/full/463871a.html

Published online 17 February 2010 | Nature 463, 871-873 (2010) | doi:10.1038/463871a

Carbon sequestration: Buried trouble

Protesters saying "no to CO₂" are just one roadblock facing carbon sequestration — a strategy that could help prevent dangerous climate change. Richard Van Noorden investigates.

Richard Van Noorden

The idea of injecting 400,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide under a shopping mall was always going to be a tough sell. And so it proved when the Dutch minister of economic affairs, Maria van der Hoeven, came to the small town of Barendrecht in December to explain why the government supported the proposal, made by the petroleum company Shell.

Public opposition is just one of several obstacles blocking the strategy known as carbon capture and storage (CCS). The idea behind CCS is to strip CO₂ from the exhaust gases of factories and power plants, then inject it as a compressed liquid into secure geological formations, such as depleted oil and gas deposits.

Politicians and scientists have for years touted CCS as a way to help the world cut its carbon emissions. And the idea of injecting CO₂ underground is not a pipe dream: the petroleum industry has been doing it for nearly 40 years to aid the extraction of crude oil. But efforts to expand CCS to save the climate have largely stalled. Public opposition is disrupting some early pilot schemes, the process is too expensive in most cases, regulations covering its use are not yet fully in place and investors are uncertain about its viability at large scales.

"There is lots of research and lots of talking — lots of recycling of information — but little real progress," says Heleen de Coninck, who works on climate policy at the Energy research Centre of the Netherlands in Petten.

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