Scientists at the Iwanohara Test Site in Nagaoka, northwest of Tokyo, have experimented with pulling carbon dioxide from power plant exhaust and storing it beneath the surface of the Earth. After years of mining and pumping fuels out of the earth, the energy industry has potentially valuable experience with underground sites where CO2 could be stored. (Associated Press)

In Canada's race to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Alberta hopes to take an early lead — albeit using a technological shortcut that would keep its fossil fuel economy flowing.

The controversial linchpin of Alberta's three-step climate change plan, unveiled in late January by Premier Ed Stelmach, is the creation of an unprecedented provincewide system for carbon capture and storage (CCS). Essentially, carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other greenhouse gases would be siphoned from smokestacks and pumped deep underground for long-term, theoretically permanent safekeeping.

"Contributions from Albertans and industry, along with innovative technology, will result in real emission reductions," Stelmach said in a news release. His government has promised up to $500 million in provincial funds to help implement large-scale carbon capture and storage. They say the system will account for 70 per cent of their planned 200-megatonne reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. (The government projects the province will produce about 400 megatonnes of carbon dioxide annually by 2050, and Stelmach pledged to cut those emissions in half, which amounts to a 14 per cent reduction below 2005 levels — far behind the 45 to 65 per cent reduction from 2006 levels sought by the federal government.) The province has not yet released any details about how and when any potential carbon capture and storage infrastructure will be built.

Good for the environment and oil companies?

In the meantime, major fossil fuel producers and users are backing a multibillion-dollar plan to pipe carbon dioxide into conventional oilfields, which would increase the fields' production lives while substantially cutting emissions.

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An oil well near Grand Prairie, Alberta, stands in silhouette against the early morning sky as gas burns from a vent pipe. Under part of a plan proposed to offset carbon emissions in the province, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases would essentially be siphoned from smokestacks and pumped deep underground for long-term, theoretically permanent safekeeping. (Chuck Stoody/Canadian Press)

"Injecting CO₂ into oil wells has been done for 30 years, so we know it works and it's safe," said Stephen Kaufman, steering committee chairman of the Integrated CO₂ Network (ICO2N), a group of 15 energy and resource companies pushing for the realization of Alberta's carbon capture and storage dream.

Collectively, ICO2N's members are a major source of Alberta's greenhouse gas emissions — the province is the source of almost one-third of all greenhouse gases emitted in Canada — and are likely to face heavy penalties in the future for failing to meet increasingly strict emission standards. While Kaufman, who's also an employee of oil and gas producer Suncor, agreed that reducing consumption remains the first and most important step in combating climate change, he argued that demand for fossil fuels shows no signs of abating.

"Carbon capture and storage has been endorsed by a wide variety of academics, governments and committees on climate change," he said, though he conceded it will take about two decades to develop a full network of 15 to 20 carbon capture and storage facilities.

Green divide

Despite Kaufman's claims, there are environmental groups that are not convinced burying greenhouse gases is the best way to reduce emissions.

"CCS remains an extremely expensive proposition. Without government subsidies, this would be at the bottom of a list of climate change solutions," said Dale Marshall, a climate change policy analyst at the David Suzuki Foundation in Ottawa.

Marshall pointed out that when the federal government signed the Kyoto Accord, politicians believed the country's forests would be the country's primary means of offsetting carbon emissions.

"What they didn't foresee was the pine beetle infestation, which has left millions of dead and rotting trees in Western Canada, and has turned our forest into a net source of greenhouse gases instead of a carbon sink."

He argues that reducing our carbon footprint and investing in clean energy, while taxing major carbon emitters, is the best course for Canadian environmental policy.

While increased reliance on solar and wind power would reduce our carbon footprint, these technologies are far from being as commercially viable as fossil fuel-based energy. Add to this the fact that developing nations continue to rely primarily on "dirty" coal-fired plants — China alone is building new ones at the alarming rate of almost one per week — and the attraction of carbon capture and storage becomes readily apparent.

Carbon capture alternatives

There are several other technologies, still in trial phase, that have the potential to reduce greenhouse gases more cheaply than the method being most heavily promoted in Alberta, and without risk of CO₂ eventually leaking out of the ground and into the atmosphere.

One of the most interesting, from Austin, Texas-based Skyonic Corp., is in small-scale pilot testing at the Big Brown Steam Electric Station, rated one of the state's 20 worst polluters in 2001. Using its relatively simple, self-powered SkyMine process, the company has devised a means of transforming up to 90 per cent of CO₂ emissions into pure sodium bicarbonate. This solid and stable form of carbon — actually better-than-food-grade baking soda — could be carted away in the same trucks that bring the plant its coal, either to be sold or used as landfill or to fill decommissioned mines. (For every ton of CO₂, almost two tons of bicarbonates are produced.)

Mining trucks carry loads of oil-laden sand after being loaded by huge shovels at the Albian Sands oils sands project in Ft. McMurray, Alberta. (Jeff McIntosh, AP)

SkyMine also produces significant quantities of profitable hydrogen and chlorine byproducts, and also eliminates almost all acid rain-generating emissions — as well as smog-causing chemicals, heavy metals and mercury, the last of which allows coal plants to continue selling fly ash for use in cement making, which has increasingly strict mercury limits.

According to Skyonic spokesperson Stacy MacDiarmid, even with the initial expense of constructing or retrofitting a coal power plant with a SkyMine, the salable byproducts and potential for obtaining carbon offset credits should greatly increase the technology's appeal.

"We hope to make a serious impact in reducing greenhouse gases and pollution, especially in the developing world, where a lot of the electricity is produced at dirty, coal-burning plants," said MacDiarmid, adding that SkyMine's cheap chlorine byproduct would facilitate water treatment in poorer countries.

Several utility companies have expressed interest in the technology, and MacDiarmid said that Skyonic expects to fully equip its first 500-megawatt coal plant within two years.

Another type of carbon sequestration is being developed by Athens, Georgia-based Eprida. The company has refined an ancient method of agricultural carbon storage: converting plant matter into charcoal fertilizer, or biochar, and hydrogen-based biodiesel.

Eprida's technology, which would be incorporated into self-contained units on individual farms, involves the slow, oxygen-free burning of biomass, such as wood chips, corn stalks, or even manure. Plant matter carbon becomes carbon dioxide when it decomposes, but using Eprida's technology, half of the carbon is converted into solid form — the charcoal fertilizer — which can be stored in the soil.

"Normally, the plant mass would just decompose and almost all of its carbon is released into the air as CO₂ gas," said Eprida head researcher Bob Hawkins.

The goal is for the company's eventual customers — commercial production is still at least two years away — to be able to produce their own clean energy and high-quality fertilizer.

"Unlike with conventional food or biofuel agriculture, where you're essentially mining the soil, biochar puts nutrients and energy back into the earth," Hawkins said. There is also the prospect of farmers receiving offset credits, he said, if the company can prove that once biochar carbon is in the ground, it stays there.

Eprida is currently studying its fertilizer's carbon storage longevity, but Hawkins pointed to the fact that the original pioneers of biochar-based agriculture, in Brazil's Amazon basin, disappeared about 600 years ago.

"And the soil is still as black and fertile as it was then."

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