Scientists hope plans to pump carbon dioxide into the ground can slow climate damage

Scientists hope plans to pump carbon dioxide into the ground can slow climate damage

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

By Mike Lafferty THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Pop a can of soda and the fizz tells you that you’ve just added a little more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

It’s something humans have been doing at an increasing rate ever since our first major technological advance — learning to start fires.

Carbon-dioxide releases got a bump when we discovered the energy in coal. And they jumped when we discovered oil, refined it into gasoline and began driving around the planet

Add carbon dioxide from poor farming practices and from cutting down huge swaths of forest, and it’s little wonder scientists say that CO2 is at its highest level in more than 600,000 years and global temperatures are on the rise.

As researchers try to figure out what to do, one idea is being tested — putting the carbon back where it came from.

At different sites, plans call to pump CO2 deep into the bedrock where it was once part of the coal and oil, and back into farm soils where it had accumulated for eons before the plow.

"This is something we need to do regardless. We have lost this carbon (to the atmosphere) and we need to put it back," said Rattan Lal, a global-warming researcher at the Ohio State University School of Natural Resources.

"Otherwise the system is not sustainable."

Dire warnings

The system Lal is referring to is Earth’s climate. Every year humans release nearly 8 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Since 1800, levels of the greenhouse gas have increased more than 27 percent.

Current levels are being recorded at 380 parts per million. By 2050, carbon dioxide is expected to register between 450 and 550 ppm.

Global temperatures could increase between 2 and 10 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Scientists warn of a scary place called the "tipping point," beyond which the climate might change permanently, turning oceans acidic.

The signs, they say, are ominous. Well before the end of the century, the summer ice cap over the North Pole will be gone. Worldwide, glaciers are melting, the Antarctic ice sheet is breaking up, sea levels are rising, North American summers are hotter and hurricanes are stronger.

"We’re seeing the first wave of climate refugees from Katrina," said Earth Policy Institute President Lester Brown during a recent trip to Columbus.

As sea levels rise, residents of low-lying Pacific islands are being relocated. Eventually, much of Florida could disappear.

Local blame

Although the United States is home to only 4 percent of the Earth’s population, the United States produces 27 percent of its carbon dioxide.

And the U.S. Department of Energy estimates carbon-dioxide emissions from American electricity plants have increased 20 percent since 1993.

Ohio is a major contributor. The state’s 33 coal-fired electricity plants released 138 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2005. In total CO2 releases from all activities, only Texas and California produce more.

But the state is trying to do something about the problem. A high-tech movement is growing to pump the gas deep into bedrock.

Another plan calls for tying up carbon in farm soils and in trees. Together, these methods could remove billions of tons of human-generated carbon dioxide from the air.

The technology already is in place to start.

In the fall, scientists are to begin drilling a hole 7,000 feet deep into the sandstone bedrock beneath a power plant in the Ohio River town of Shadyside in Belmont County.

By early 2008, they hope to pump more than 10,000 tons of CO2 into the ground.

The four-year, $18.1 million project will replace only a tiny fraction of the carbon dioxide generated at FirstEnergy’s Burger plant, but it will be enough for scientists to learn whether the idea can work on a larger scale.

The idea is for layers of shale and salt above the sandstone to keep the carbon dioxide underground.

"Sandstone works really well because the spaces in the rock are interconnected," said Battelle geologist Philip Jagucki.

He said limestone works as well. And the gas can be stored in underground reservoirs of ancient salt water or in abandoned oil reservoirs.

"In those deep formations, the regional flow patterns are so slow," Jagucki said. "Once it’s there, it’s going to stay there."

The technology also is planned for FutureGen, a federally funded experimental, pollution-free plant that Ohio and several other states are hoping to provide land for.

Preliminary studies show the Ohio Valley can handle the challenge.

"Modeling indicates we can inject enormous amounts of CO2," said Jagucki.

First test

The test hole will capture only about 1 percent of the carbon dioxide created at the site.

If it works and power companies begin to bury CO2, consumers could see their electricity rates increase 30 percent to 50 percent, Jagucki said.

The Department of Energy’s "goal is to get it down to 10 percent of the cost of the energy production, hopefully less," he said.

The federal government is paying as much as $14.3 million of the experiment’s price. The state is contributing $750,000, and more than two dozen regional partners, from universities to trade associations, are paying the remainder.

"Burger is an older plant. The challenge is, can you retrofit existing plants to capture and sequester CO2?" said Mark Shanahan, executive director of the Ohio Air Quality Development Authority.

The test also is important to the state’s coal industry. Shanahan said regulations limiting carbon-dioxide emissions are probably inevitable.

"If Ohio doesn’t help set the pace, we could have the whole acid-rain debate again," said Jack Shaner of the Ohio Environmental Council.

The state, backed by the coal industry, lobbied Congress against acid-rain restrictions, especially putting scrubbers on power-plant stacks to remove sulfur from local coal. The regulations came anyway, and demand for Ohio coal dropped.

"Ohio said there’s no such thing as acid rain and the state’s coal industry continues to pay the price," Shaner said.

Down on the farm

Burying carbon dioxide from power plants is only part of a possible solution. Better farming practices and renewed forests also will be part of a plan to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions, Jagucki said.

Smart-farming techniques that tie up carbon are cheap. Sequestering carbon in the soil is a natural process, especially compared with drilling wells and storing CO2 in rocks, said OSU’s Lal.

Healthy topsoil contains decaying, carbon-rich organic matter that provides nutrients to plants. Growing crops, in turn, absorb carbon dioxide from the air through their leaves. The plant separates the carbon from the oxygen, incorporating the carbon in plant tissue and replenishing oxygen in the atmosphere.

Plowing, however, mixes the soil and introduces large amounts of oxygen in the air, which breaks down the organic matter, combining with carbon to create carbon dioxide.

Agriculture scientists have developed a way to farm without plowing. Called no-till, the practice leaves crop residues on the ground and in the ground. Carbon dioxide remains there as well.

No-till works, said Fairfield County farmer Roger Wolfe.

Wolfe has been growing grain this way since the 1970s. He noticed an improvement in the soil after the first couple of years.

"Some of our very best soils have degraded, but the loss has been hidden by the use of fertilizers," Wolfe said.

David Brandt socks away even more carbon by growing a cover crop and by spreading manure on many of his no-till acres near Carroll, Ohio.

"In our operation, no-till takes less labor. We have time to do other things," he said.

And the cover crop saves on rising nitrogen fertilizer costs.

But experts say for no-till to make a difference, millions of farmers would have to adopt its use.

About 5 percent of the world’s cropland is farmed using no-till methods, although the United States lags far behind other nations including Argentina, Brazil, Canada and Chile.

If all Ohio farmland was no-till, 39 million tons of carbon dioxide could be removed from the air, according to a recent Ohio Environmental Council report.

Farming no-till worldwide would save about 1 billion tons of carbon annually, about oneseventh of the total carbon emitted from burning fossil fuels, Lal said.

Branching out

Halting tropical-forest clearing and replanting woodlands could offset another billion tons.

Because trees are about 20 percent carbon, forests and the organic matter in a forest floor tie up vast amounts of carbon.

More than 1 trillion tons of carbon are stored in the world’s forests, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. At the same time, forest destruction adds almost 6 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year.

Planting more trees, especially in the tropics, and reducing deforestation could make up for about 15 percent of world carbon emissions from fossil fuels over the next 50 years, some experts say.

But other researchers say that’s too much to expect.

A four-year experiment at Duke University suggests that 10 percent is more reasonable, according to William Schlesinger, who led the research.

One reason might be that forests that had suffered loss don’t rebound well and might not store as much carbon, according to Ohio State scientists.

"We’re living with the consequences of bad management practices from a hundred years ago," said OSU biologist Peter Curtis.

No accord

It’s unclear what the United States ultimately will do. Despite some efforts, the country still officially denies there is a problem with carbon dioxide.

The United States has yet to ratify the 1997 Kyoto climate accords that call for sharp reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions.

And any U.S. efforts likely will be dwarfed by rapid economic development and sharply rising energy use in developing nations.

For example, China adds one coal-fired power plant a week to satisfy its growing demand for electricity and will eventually be the world’s leading carbon-dioxide generator.

"China now consumes more basic commodities — grain, meat, coal, steel than the U.S.," said Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute.

"China’s paper consumption has doubled. There go the world’s forests."

With an economy increasing at 8 percent a year, by 2031, Chinese will have incomes allowing them to match the consumption of Americans. India is not far behind. The question is whether the Earth can stand two or even three or more consumptionbased countries. "There is no guarantee we’re going to make it through," Brown said.