EU Announces New Carbon Storage Pilot Program - AFP

[hatrack]

A huge pilot project to capture greenhouse gases and store them underground is being launched this week, aiming to slash Europe's output of harmful CO2 by 10 percent, officials said Tuesday. The world's biggest such project, inaugurated Wednesday at Esbjerg on Denmark's western coast, will bid to capture 90 percent of carbon dioxide produced by fossil-fueled power stations like coal plants or oil refineries.

"By developing technologies for carbon capture and storage, we can reduce emissions in the medium-term as we move to large scale use of renewable, carbon-free energy sources," said EU science commissioner Janez Potocnik.

The CASTOR project works by capturing CO2 emissions as they are produced by power stations and then storing them underground, to prevent them interacting with the atmosphere and producing the greenhouse effect.

In particular the EU, which has given 8.5 million euros for the project, hopes to make the process more attractive by cutting the cost, from about 60 euros per tonne currently to 20 euros per tonne in the future.

EDIT

Pardon me for asking, but why is it always a "pilot program"? Why 8.5 million Euros? Why not a real program? Why not a hell of a lot more money for it?

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/New_EU_Project_To_Slash_Greenhouse_Gases.html

[opihimoimoi]

1. Its a start...let us hope it grows so ALL Energy Plants use the

technology applicable. The Green House gasses curtailed might make a huge diff...especially if electric cars become the norm...

[Dead_Parrot]

2. To answer your question...

If it was a REAL program, people might expect it to work. This way they can right off the whole thing as a bad idea later and say "Well, it was only an experiment".

[rfkrfk]

3. sweeping dirt under the rug

nobody is stupid enough to believe this

[mom cat]

4. Here is a better idea:

Algae — like a breath mint for smokestacks
By Mark Clayton, The Christian Science Monitor
BOSTON — Isaac Berzin is a big fan of algae. The tiny, single-celled plant, he says, could transform the world's energy needs and cut global warming.

A smokestack at the Mitchell Power Plant in Moundsville, W. Va.
Charles P.Saus, AP

Overshadowed by a multibillion-dollar push into other "clean-coal" technologies, a handful of tiny companies are racing to create an even cleaner, greener process using the same slimy stuff that thrives in the world's oceans.

Enter Dr. Berzin, a rocket scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. About three years ago, while working on an experiment for growing algae on the International Space Station, he came up with the idea for using it to clean up power-plant exhaust.

If he could find the right strain of algae, he figured he could turn the nation's greenhouse-gas-belching power plants into clean-green generators with an attached algae farm next door.

"This is a big idea," Berzin says, "a really powerful idea."

And one that's taken him to the top — a rooftop. Bolted onto the exhaust stacks of a brick-and-glass 20-megawatt power plant behind MIT's campus are rows of fat, clear tubes, each with green algae soup simmering inside.

Fed a generous helping of CO2-laden emissions, courtesy of the power plant's exhaust stack, the algae grow quickly even in the wan rays of a New England sun. The cleansed exhaust bubbles skyward, but with 40% less CO2 (a larger cut than the Kyoto treaty mandates) and another bonus: 86% less nitrous oxide.

more at:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2006-01-10-algae-powerplants_x.htm

[bemildred]

5. Well, that's a good point.

Anything that does not scale exponentially (like biological systems) won't do the job. And given that you have such means at hand, it is a touchy business whether you can manage the sort of control required to restore something like equilibrium (short of whatever new, natural equilibrium would eventually result, e.g. Venus or Mars or the early Triassic.