Citizens Against CO2 Sequestration

Quote about Truth

2010-07-07T20:07:00.002-04:00

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act” _George Orwell

High CO2 concentrations can turn fish into daredevils

2010-07-07T19:52:00.002-04:00

High CO2 concentrations can turn fish into daredevils

By Casey Johnston | Last updated a day ago

High carbon dioxide concentrations in the ocean may turn fish into reckless daredevils, according to a study published in PNAS this week. When scientists exposed two different species of fish larvae to elevated carbon dioxide levels, the fish began to ignore the smell of predators, multiplying their mortality rate up to nine times the current level. The oceans are predicted to have high enough concentrations to completely impair the fishes' predator detection as early as the end of this century.

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Carbon sequestration too leaky to stop global warming

2010-07-07T19:48:00.000-04:00

Source - http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/07/carbon-sequestration-too-leaky-to-stop-global-warming.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss

Carbon sequestration too leaky to stop global warming

By Casey Johnston | Last updated about 23 hours ago

Carbon dioxide sequestration isn't a great global warming solution unless we develop less leaky equipment or commit to regular re-sequestering, according to a paper published in Nature Geoscience. If the containers used don't leak less than one percent every thousand years, atmospheric carbon would have to be monitored carefully and resequestered on a regular basis over tens of thousands of years in order to match the effects of reducing carbon emissions. Otherwise, sequestration would only slow the warming, not stop it.

To study the long-term effects of carbon sequestration, Dr. Gary Shaffer modeled several scenarios and methods of storing carbon, both underground and in the ocean, as well as various combinations of the two.

He noted that current methods for both types of sequestration have leakages rate that are too high, and would only lead to a delayed warming of the atmosphere. According to his calculations, any method of sequestration would have to leak less than 1 percent of its volume every one thousand years in order to fully prevent global warming.

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Technical Announcement: New Method to Gauge Nation’s CO2 Storage Potential Released: 7/6/2010

2010-07-07T19:43:00.000-04:00

A new methodology to assess the nation's potential to store carbon dioxide (CO₂) is available.

The U.S. Geological Survey will commence a national assessment of CO₂ storage potential now that its assessment methodology is complete. This research can be used to plan for the long-term storage of CO₂ to help lessen the impacts of climate change.

“The estimation of domestic or global CO₂ storage resource in geologic formations is challenging,” said USGS Energy Resources Program Coordinator Brenda Pierce. “This methodology utilizes innovative calculation tools with robust geologic interpretation and allows for an assessment that can characterize the storage potential in a uniform manner across the United States.”

The new methodology identifies a means to assess the mass of CO₂ that can be retained within the pore space in underground rocks. The process of injecting liquid CO₂ into subsurface rocks is known as geologic carbon sequestration.

Read the entire article here

Stop PurGen Coal Plant Needs YOUR Help

2010-07-07T08:16:00.000-04:00

www.stoppurgencoalplant.org

An experimental coal/chemical plant and carbon dioxide storage project, called PurGen, has been proposed for Linden, New Jersey.

SCS Energy, a Massachusetts based company, has proposed to build a 750MW IGCC coal plant with unproven carbon capture and sequestration technology in one of the most densely populated areas of the country.

SCS plans to process coal for energy in Linden and then send a trillion pounds of pressurized, liquid carbon dioxide waste via a 100-mile pipeline through the Raritan Bay and out into the seabed off Atlantic City.

SCS says the carbon dioxide will stay in the ocean floor forever, but they have no proof or scientific evidence to back up their claims.

For additional information call 609.656.7612 or e-mail info@stoppurgencoalplant.org

New Research From Niels Bohr Institute

2010-07-07T08:06:00.000-04:00

ADenother new piece of research coming out of Denmark, this time from the most respected Niels Bohr Institute, by professor Gary Shaffer.

See following links:

http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v3/n7/abs/ngeo896.html
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/06/geological-storage-co2-emissions-only-viable-leakage-less-than-1-percent-1000-years.php
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100627155110.htm

NEW REPORT: STORING CO2 UNDERGROUND WILL ADD TO CO2 IN THE ATMOSPHERE

2010-07-07T01:19:00.001-04:00

The brief report provides new analysis of why carbon capture and storage is a false climate solution that can’t deliver the emissions reductions its industry and government backers worldwide are claiming.

The report can be downloaded via this link: http://ccs-info.org/, which is the NOAH Friends of the Earth Denmark website dedicated to CCS solely.

NOAH / Friends of the Earth Denmark

NOAH is a grassroots organization founded in 1969. We became a member of FoE in 1988.

They publish a quarterly magazine and 2-3 books in Danish each year. Their main national campaigns concern transportation, dioxins and biotechnology.

They are participating in the following FoE campaigns: "European campaign to halt GM pollution" and "New Local Partners for Sustainability". They have and are, still working on the Sustainable Europe and Environmental Space concepts.

NOAH Friends of the Earth Denmark Shows that Capturing CO2 and Storing It Underground Is Not a Solution to Climate Change

COPENHAGEN, DENMARK, June 2, 2010 –
The technology known as 'Carbon Capture and Storage' (CCS) cannot deliver the reductions in CO2 emissions that the proponents of CCS are claiming, according to a report published today by NOAH/ Friends of the Earth Denmark.[1]

If CCS is chosen as a major strategy to mitigate carbon emissions from coal power plants and coal fuelled industries, nearly 90% of emissions expected between 2010 and 2050 from the large coal fuelled plants would reach the atmosphere anyway, according to the new report.

Palle Bendsen, spokesperson for NOAH / Friends of the Earth Denmark said, “When CCS technology is observed over time and across the sectors where it is planned to be applied – when we watch the whole film as opposed to the single snapshot of one power plant or a single year in the far future – it is obvious that CCS cannot deliver. Institutions like the International Energy Agency and IPCC must take into consideration the whole picture and review their assessment of this dubious technology”

The available global carbon budget is so small that global emissions must peak before 2015 if we want to avoid catastrophic climate change. That is a clear message from recent scientific studies. From 2015 onward, emissions must decline rapidly. Any mitigation tool must be seen from this perspective. However, carbon capture and storage cannot fit into such a scenario because it is impossible to deploy early enough. On top of that, CCS will be ineffective and extremely costly.

Countries like China, the US, Germany, Spain, Australia and South Africa, among others, plan to use CCS to try to mitigate the contribution of fossil fuel emissions to global warming. EU has set large sums aside to finance 12 demonstration plants over the next 10 years. The climate law proposed in the US has similar provisions for CCS.

Palle Bendsen said: “Financing CCS is doomed to be a huge misuse of public funds. Our report shows why. EU and governments should direct their subsidies exclusively to energy conservation, energy efficiency and renewables, as well as finance development of sustainable energy supply systems in developing countries. That’s the way to secure decreasing emissions.”

“CCS will lock in coal. Though far from being commercially ready, CCS is being used as an excuse to continue to build coal power plants that are 'CCS-ready.' But such plants will be preserved unchanged for many years to come. ‘CCS-ready’ is a meaningless term,” he added.

“It is obvious that CCS is competing with renewables for R&D resources and capital, thus preventing the rapid development of sustainable energy supply systems.. What we need is a fossil free future. We must reduce energy demands in rich countries with high emissions, and we must increase energy efficiency.” Palle Bendsen added.

CCS is often called a “bridging technology,” connecting a dirty fossil fuel present with a bright green future. This is a false picture. It will take a very long time before CCS would be able to deliver any significant reductions.
CCS is a technology to keep the fossil fuel industries in business with large public subsidies.

Main findings of the report:

More than 350 billion tonnes CO2 will be emitted from coal plants to the atmosphere despite a fast deployment of CCS in a scenario with CO2-emissions decreasing to 50% by 2050.

Emitting 350 billion tonnes of CO2 will make demand on 90% of the remaining budget for CO2 from all fossil fuels 2010-2050. (Coal represents only 42% of emissions from all fossil fuels).

Only 46 billion tonnes of CO2 or 11% of CO2 emissions will be avoided between 2010 and 2050. Until 2030 only 7 billion tonnes of CO2 will be avoided despite a fast deployment of CCS.

For more information please contact:

Palle Bendsen, climate spokesperson for NOAH / Friends of the Earth Denmark,

+45 98 14 76 95, palle(at)noah.dk

Kim Ejlertsen, climate spokesperson for NOAH / Friends of the Earth Denmark,

+45 57 52 75 92, kim(at)noah.dk

NOAH/Friends of the Earth Denmark’s website exclusively dealing with CCS: http://ccs-info.org (in English)

NOTES:

[1] The report by NOAH/ Friends of the Earth Denmark, “An assessment of cumulative CO2 reductions from carbon capture and storage on coal fuelled plants in a carbon constrained world,” is available at http://ccs-info.org/

Alternative scenario without CCS:
"Europe’s Share of the Climate Challenge: Domestic Actions and International Obligations to Protect the Planet"
A study prepared by Stockholm Environment Institute in partnership with Friends of the Earth Europe showed that emission reductions of at least 40% below 1990 levels within Europe by 2020, and cuts of 90% by 2050, are possible without CCS, nuclear, agrofuels and offsetting.

www.sei-international.org/climateshareeurope

Apart from this the downsides of carbon capture and storage technologies are many:

a. CCS will not only mean a prolongation but even entail an increase in the use of coal of 25-40%, which in itself is linked with serious negative social, health and environmental impacts.

b. CCS applied worldwide would according to IEA require infrastructure for transport (pipelines and ships) that is much larger than the present transport infrastructure for all commodities put together.

c. CCS will require much more water per produced kWh, thus competing for a vital resource already in great demand. This especially disqualifies CCS as a technology to be applied at inland facilities with freshwater cooling in countries like China, India, Spain, South Africa and the US.

d. CCS will be extremely expensive. The chain of costs of a coal-fired CCS plant involve: extraction and transport of approximately 40% more coal, construction of the CCS plant, capture of CO2, construction of transport infrastructure, transport of captured CO2, injection and storage of captured CO2, safeguarding storage, monitoring and control of storage facilities. This is why CCS will require large-scale public co-financing. There is no way it could be commercially viable to introduce CCS without this.

e. The environmental, social and health damages due to extraction of coal is most often incurred upon people not benefitting from the energy services that rely on coal as fuel. The same goes for the risks related to possible leakages from underground storage.

f. The long time liability concerning carbon storage is an issue that remains unsolved. According to the EU-directive on CCS, private operators can transfer liability to governments only 20 years after the storage site is sealed and closed.

g. CCS will not work well together with an energy supply system with a large share of renewables. The costs of CCS would mean that the plants will be set to deliver base load at full steam, thus not working well with oscillating renewables like wind and solar.

h. Last but not least, as CCS competes with renewables for R&D resources and capital, CCS will in itself prevent the rapid development of sustainable energy supply systems for an energy efficient future with reduced energy demands.

MUST READ - Educate yourself about the risks involved with CO2 Sequestration

2010-05-26T01:53:00.003-04:00

I consider this a must read document -

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/downloads/VEF-Technical_Document_072408.pdf

NETL Report - Degradation of Wellbore Cement Due to CO2 Injection

2010-05-26T01:50:00.000-04:00

This NETL report may be found on the web -http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/factsheets/rd/R%26D044.pdf

Background

The majority of locations that are being considered for carbon dioxide (CO2) injection

and sequestration are typically found in areas that have a history of oil, natural gas,

and/or coalbed methane production. This is due to value-added opportunities such

as enhanced oil recovery (EOR), enhanced gas recovery (EGR), and enhanced coal

bed methane (ECBM) recovery. There also exists a greater knowledge base for saline

formations that lie either above or below oil and gas reservoirs due to well logging

and exploration activities. As a result of human activity, these formations are typically

punctured by a significant number of wells from both exploration and production.

No matter how impermeable an overlying caprock is, the sealing integrity may be

compromised by the presence of wells. Well bores thus represent the most likely route

for leakage of CO2 from geologic carbon sequestration.

Abandoned wells are typically sealed with cement plugs intended to block vertical

migration of fluids. In addition, active wells are usually lined with steel casing,

with cement filling the outer annulus (Note: in oilfield terminology, an annulus is a

ring-shaped hole which extends the length of the well bore) in order to prevent

leakage between the casing and formation rock. The permeability and integrity of

the cement will determine how effective it is in preventing leakage.

After CO2 is injected into a saline formation, it may continue

Stop PurGen Coal Plant - NJ

2010-03-02T07:22:00.000-05:00

Our friends in NJ would like your support to stop the PurGen Coal Plant there.... please go to their web site to read more about their situation and the earthquakes that have happened in this area in the past.

Once again, if we were moving to alternative energy sources instead of catering to the coal industry CCS would not be an issue. Please support them.

Stop PureGen

NJ Earthquake information http:/stoppurgencoalplant.org/nj-earthquakes-could-shake-purgens-foundation

Figuring out where to put the carbon

2010-03-02T06:46:00.000-05:00

Figuring out where to put the carbon:

"Such estimates are complicated because there are several different mechanisms by which the CO2 can spread out from the point where it is released underground, and additional mechanisms that allow it to eventually become trapped. The spreading can occur by natural groundwater flows or by migration upward along a sloping aquifer, and the trapping can be caused by the CO2 dissolving in the water in deep aquifers, or by seeping through capillary action into cracks in the rock.

Juanes said his system accounts for all of the major known mechanisms by which carbon dioxide can get trapped in these underground formations. But for future research, he added, “The key uncertainty is the potential migration of CO2 vertically across geologic layers.” For instance, the pressure of the injected CO2 might produce faults and fractures in the rock, and this could create pathways to the surface and into the atmosphere. Juanes says his team is now working to better understand this potential mechanism."

Carbon Capture Viable for Indiana?

2010-03-02T05:33:00.001-05:00

Carbon Capture: Viable for Indiana?:

"The two Indiana University professors that helped organize the summit were John A. Rupp, assistant director for research with the Indiana Geological Survey, and Kenneth Richards, associate professor in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs. The summit's fndings, recommendations and presentations can be downloaded from http://www.in.gov/oed/2573.htm."

"Some of the recommendations from the summit have begun to be implemented: the task force to assess state policy issues has been established, some technical challenges are being addressed by demonstration projects and the state is involved in investigations of several options for transportation of captured CO2. Two regional consortia that include the Indiana Geological Survey -- the Midwest Geological Sequestration Consortium and the Midwest Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership -- are investigating the technical challenges in the region by conducting deep subsurface injection projects in or near Indiana to examine the feasibility of underground CO2 storage."

Read the full article here

Great Indiana map - Geographic Information Systems

2010-03-01T17:30:00.000-05:00

IndianaMap.org is the public source for map data in Indiana. It includes the information people need most in a format that is accessible to both the general public and expert geographic information systems (GIS) users.

The four layers that provide county-based framework data (including address points, street centerlines, land parcels, and governmental boundaries) have been updated. The layers were compiled from data maintained by various county agencies in Indiana, as part of the IndianaMap Data Sharing Initiative between Indiana Geographic Information Council (IGIC), Indiana Office of Technology (IOT), Indiana Geographic Information Office (GIO), Indiana Department of Homeland Security (IDHS), Indiana Geological Survey (IGS) and participating Indiana counties. The layers named "Address Points (IDHS)" and "Street Centerlines (IDHS)" can be found in the following folder: INFRASTRUCTURE > Roads. The layers named "Land Parcels (IDHS)" and "Government Boundaries (IDHS)" can be found in the following folder: DEMOGRAPHICS > Political & Other Boundaries.

This map and information comes from this web site - http://inmap.indiana.edu/index.html

NOTE: All four layers are also NOW AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD in ESRI Shapefile format.

NOTE: These new layers represent the fifth set of data harvested through the ongoing Data Sharing Initiative program by IDHS from local government sources on February 2, 2010. As a preliminary data set, these data have not been completely quality control checked for completeness, accuracy or content and are provided for program demonstration purposes only. These partial data are provided "as-is" and are not to be used for any official or business purpose. Be sure to read the metadata for each layer.

Indiana Petroleum Database Management System (PDMS)

2010-03-01T17:25:00.000-05:00

From the web site http://igs.indiana.edu/pdms/index.cfm

The Petroleum Database Management System (PDMS) is a web application designed to distribute petroleum-related information from the Indiana Geological Survey (IGS). The database contains information on more than 70,000 petroleum-related wells drilled in Indiana. The data include information on well locations, completion zones, logs, operators, lease names, tests, hydrocarbon shows, samples, cores, geologic formations and tops, and much more. The PDMS is built around three modules: 1) the Well Record Tables; 2) the Map Viewer, which together with the Well Record Tables, provide two interfaces for viewing petroleum well information; and 3) the Fields and Production summaries, which summarize oil, gas, and gas storage fields, and historical oil production.

You can check the various boxes to look at different data... very cool... Ohio doesn't have this.
http://igs.indiana.edu/arcims/pdmsims/pdmsFlash_new.cfm

Indiana CCS Summit, Carbon Capture & Storage - Fall 2008

2010-03-01T06:41:00.003-05:00

Here is the link to this report - http://www.in.gov/oed/files/ccs-summit-print.pdf

Another link you will want to review is the summit's fndings, recommendations and presentations - all of these can be downloaded from http://www.in.gov/oed/2573.htm

A quote from the report referenced above -

"Some of the recommendations from the summit have begun to be implemented: the task force to assess state policy issues has been established, some technical challenges are being addressed by demonstration projects and the state is involved in investigations of several options for transportation of captured CO2. Two regional consortia that include the Indiana Geological Survey -- the Midwest Geological Sequestration Consortium and the Midwest Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership -- are investigating the technical challenges in the region by conducting deep subsurface injection projects in or near Indiana to examine the feasibility of underground CO2 storage."

First Look at Carbon Capture and Storage in a West Virginia Coal-Fired Power Plant [Slide Show]

2010-02-28T23:17:00.000-05:00

http://www.scientificamerican.com/slideshow.cfm?id=first-look-at-carbon-capture-and-storage

CO2 Capture and Storage Gains a Growing Foothold - Feb 2010

2010-02-28T22:29:00.002-05:00

From the web site -

http://globe-net.com/articles/2010/february/22/co2-capture-and-storage-gains-a-growing-foothold.aspx?id=4446

The Mountaineer plant in West Virginia is the first power plant in the world to capture and store underground a portion of its CO2 emissions. The Philip Sporn power plant is visible in the distance.But just beyond Sporn's waste ponds stands the steaming cooling tower of American Electric's Mountaineer Power Plant, which burns 12,000 tons of coal a day to produce steam in a single massive boiler and generate up to 1,300 megawatts of electricity. Roiling white water vapor billows out of its 100-story smokestack, a visible sign of the scrubbers and other technology that remove as much as 98 percent of the plant's sulfur dioxide emissions and 90 percent of its nitrogen oxides.

And to top it off, since October, an oversized chemistry set employs baker's ammonia (ammonium carbonate) to strip more than 90 percent of the CO2 from a small portion of the Mountaineer plant's waste gas and turn it into ammonium bicarbonate. Heat and pressure in another part of the carbon-capture machine turn that back into baker's ammonia, delivering a nearly pure stream of CO2 gas that is compressed into a liquid and pumped into two wells that drop 1.5 miles beneath the earth. There, the captured CO2 is stored permanently between grains of rock.

Mountaineer's chilled ammonia unit collects about 1.5 percent of the plant's flue gas and runs it through a chemical process to capture more than 90 percent of the carbon dioxide.

If Sporn represents the dirty past of coal-fired electricity generation, Mountaineer is the future - the first power plant in the world to both capture and store underground any part of its CO2 emissions.

At this point, Mountaineer stores less than 2 percent of the more than 500,000 metric tons of CO2 pumped out each month by the power plant, which generates enough electricity for 1 million American homes

.

Read the full article here

Call to Action - Join the Fight Against CO2 Sequestration in Randolph County, Indiana

2010-02-28T09:04:00.000-05:00

Join the fight against CO2 Sequestration in Randolph County on Tuesday, March 2nd.

The open forum is at 6:30 p.m. in the Community Room on Columbia Street in Union City, Indiana.

Every voice matters.

Potential impacts of CCS to underground sources of drinking water

2010-02-28T09:02:00.001-05:00

Water is our most precious resource - one we often take for granted. Much of the United States is predicted to have a water shortage.... we need to take great measures to protect it.

CO2 sequestration is also known as "CCS" or "GCS" - for geological carbon sequestration.

Risks to our drinking water -

The following quotes come the article linked at the end of this posting.

"There are several potential scenarios by which a USDW may be impacted by GCS activities. Potential pathways include upward migration, fractured cap rock, faults, trace contaminants included in the CO2 stream, a microannulus outside the final casing, and the mobilization of metals from native minerals."

"The success of GCS relies on the structural integrity of confining units, for trapping CO2 in underlying permeable formations. Injection of CO2 into the receiving aquifer has the potential to cause deformation, trigger seismicity, reactivate faults, and compromise seals in wells. Each of these processes could increase the risk of leakage jeopardizing containment and the protection of groundwater quality."

"Risk is typically defined as the product of the probability of occurrence of an event and the negative consequence of the event. There are concerns that there is limited likelihood data concerning the consequences of GCS, which might result in either over or underestimation of chances of occurrence. Water purveyors take pride in meeting their mandate to protect the public health by providing safe clean drinking water.

While the probability of a USDW being significantly impacted may be low, the negative consequences of any such incident have the potential to be very high. The proposed rule requires operators of GCS facilities to provide financial assurances adequate for corrective actions, plugging and abandonment of wells, post injection site care and closure, and emergency response for failed injection wells. The question of how to structure liability for long-term risks to USDWs associated with the geologic sequestration of CO2 has not yet been resolved."

Read the full article here

Shell CO2 stocking plans under fire in the Netherlands

2010-02-28T07:52:00.000-05:00

Our friends in the Netherlands are in the midst of a battle with Shell Oil to stop a CO2 project under their densely populated city - whenever a government and/or company want to do something that impacts the environment, the people living there should have a say.... they oppose it. We hope Shell respects the wishes of the people who live there - Barendrecht is their HOME.

A carbon capture and storage facility that is planned in the Netherlands faces harsh criticism and active protesting.

A plan by oil giant Shell to store 300,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year in a depleted gas reservoir beneath the Dutch city of Barendrecht has drawn the ire of residents and local officials who have vowed to thwart it.

"We are going to do everything to oppose this project," declared Barendrecht deputy mayor Simon Zuurbier, who voiced fears for the safety of the city's 50,000 inhabitants.

"We are taking legal action to get it cancelled and we'll approve none of the required permits."
Read the full article here

Carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) in geological formations in INDIA

2010-02-28T07:27:00.000-05:00

I've included this article that is specific for INDIA because it does a nice job of explaining the process and has several links at the end.

http://cdm.unfccc.int/about/ccs/docs/CCS_geo.pdf

Diagnostic Monitoring of Biogeochemical Interactions of a Shallow Aquifer in Response to a CO2 Leak

2010-02-28T07:08:00.004-05:00

A grant to watch -

http://cfpub.epa.gov/ncer_abstracts/index.cfm/fuseaction/display.abstractDetail/abstract/9053/report/0

EPA Grant Number: R834503
Title: Diagnostic Monitoring of Biogeochemical Interactions of a Shallow Aquifer in Response to a CO2 Leak
Institution: Columbia University in the City of New York
Project Period: September 1, 2009 through August 31, 2012
Project Amount: $899,882
RFA: Integrated Design, Modeling, and Monitoring of Geologic Sequestration of Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide to Safeguard Sources of Drinking Water (2009)
Research Category: Drinking Water

Objective:
CO2 injection into deep geological formations capped by low permeability formations is one of the most promising alternatives for mitigation of anthropogenic climate change. Several deep pilot and demonstration projects are underway. However, the upward leakage of CO2 or mobilized brines through the cap rock could lead to vulnerability of shallow, overlying drinking water aquifers. Elevated levels of dissolved CO2 might affect microbial community dynamics and mobilize natural-radioisotopes, metals, and other non-potable elements and compounds. The proposed research will investigate a shallow potable water aquifer system in sand/clay sequences of the Newark Basin group using laboratory and in situ methods and test how it would respond to a high-level CO2 condition caused by a hypothetical leakage of CO2 from deep injection reservoirs. In particular, we will (1) determine metal release rates as a function of pCO2 and pH under laboratory and field conditions, (2) measure microbial community dynamics as a function of increased acidity and dissolved metal concentrations, (3) determine the role and persistence of microbial communities in the mobilization or immobilization of metallic elements, (4) measure in situ/ex situ mobilization and immobilization of metals under high-level CO2 conditions, (5) determine the extent to which leaked CO2 is geochemically trapped in the aquifer, and (6) develop diagnostic monitoring techniques to advance assessments of groundwater contamination risks and water quality deterioration due to a CO2 leakage event.

Approach:
We will conduct a series of geochemical and microbiological laboratory experiments using rock and water samples extracted from a shallow aquifer. We will also add CO2 (pCO2 up to 5 bars) to local groundwater, re-inject it into the aquifer, and then sample and monitor the elevated-CO2 aquifer water in a series of in situ push-pull and forced-gradient experiments.

Expected Results:
Results from these coupled laboratory and field experiments will greatly improve our understanding of the geochemical and microbiological reactions under low pH - high CO2 stress. We anticipate that this research will: (1) provide criteria for site selection for geological CO2 sequestration, (2) identify aquifers that would be least vulnerable to risks of CO2 leakage and subsequent contamination, and (3) provide a small number of diagnostic testing parameters that may be used in other potable aquifer systems associated with deep CO2 injection.

Supplemental Keywords:
sequestration, pollution prevention, metals, pathogens, groundwater,

More CO2 storage than previously thought for Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan and Ohio

2010-02-28T07:00:00.000-05:00

Despite the fact that CCS is extremely expensive, risky, and hard to monitor and is very controversial --- the studies and push for CCS continues. It simpley makes no sense to me.....now we find a report from December 2009 that says we can store about 74% more! NO THANK YOU!

As a reminder - In Ohio, a large portion of the Mt Simon Sandstone sits below one of the largest fresh water aquifers in the world - our most precious resource. States are running out of water...

Much of the proposed CO2 to be used for CCS in the midwest comes from ethanol plants..... in our area we had a great harvest last year with the extra CO2 - if CCS is so "safe" why are there no plans to inject it under the cities that produce the bulk of it?

I do remember reading a study done in Ohio that said it would not happen in Columbus, Ohio because "it was too urban and densely populated".

The quote below is from the article that is linked below...

The total storage capacity for the region, calculated, using efficiency factors of 0.01 and 0.04, is estimated to be 37.8 and 151.2 billion metric tons of CO2 respectively. This is approximately 74 percent higher than the values of 21.7 and 86.9 billion metric tons of CO2 estimated by the MRCSP for the capacity of the Mount Simon Sandstone in the states of Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, and Ohio.
Read the abstract here...

FROM EOR TO CCS: THE EVOLVING LEGAL AND REGULATORY FRAMEWORK FOR CARBON CAPTURE AND STORAGE

2010-02-28T06:31:00.000-05:00

Below is the link to this article.... if you scroll down to page 10 you will find a map with CO2 pipelines as of 2008.

FROM EOR TO CCS: THE EVOLVING LEGAL AND REGULATORY FRAMEWORK FOR CARBON CAPTURE AND STORAGE

CCS World Acceptance

2010-02-26T21:07:00.000-05:00

http://www.co2captureandstorage.info/docs/Copenhagen/12.%20Peta%20Ashworth%20%5BCop.CCS%5D%2011-03-2009.pdf

Scientists Target East Coast Rocks for CO2 Storage

2010-02-26T20:36:00.000-05:00

January 4, 2010

Power Plants Might Pipe Emissions Under Seabed

Scientists say buried volcanic rocks along the heavily populated coasts of New York, New Jersey and New England, as well as further south, might be ideal reservoirs to lock away carbon dioxide emitted by power plants and other industrial sources. A study this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences outlines formations on land as well as offshore, where scientists from Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory say the best potential sites may lie.

Underground burial, or sequestration, of globe-warming carbon dioxide is the subject of increasing study across the country. But up till now, research in New York has focused on inland sites where plants might send power-plant emissions into shale, a sedimentary rock that underlies much of the state. Similarly, a proposed coal-fired plant in Linden, N.J. would pump liquefied CO2 offshore into sedimentary sandstone. The idea is controversial because of fears that CO2 might leak. By contrast, the new study targets basalt, an igneous rock, which the scientists say has significant advantages.

From our Friends in France - TOTAL CO2 stocking - France - Petition against CCS for European Parliament

2010-02-23T00:09:00.002-05:00

TOTAL Cie is planning, for the first time in France, the stocking of 150 000 tonnes of CO2 over the two following years in an inhabited and cultivated city called Jurançon (in the Pyrenees). This pilot project is to be largely industrialized and globalized over the world. This project is sold as "environmental"! But this project is absolutely NOT an environmental one ! And TOTAL will be disengaged from any responsibility in 2013!

Clearly, the capture and stocking of CO2 has three major interests in the eyes of the industrialists :
1. Not being taxed on the emissions of greenhouse gases due to be buried
2. Getting rid of such waste under the guise of environmental projects
3. As a bonus, gain maximum financial benefits from the commercialization of these patents

Alongside these issues, the security of the population, and the richness of local environment, have little value!

A petition is available at http://co2.jurancon.blog.free.fr designed to the European Parliament (Your signature is important because social acceptance is central to the project, and Total has done everything not to communicate on the subject locally) - NOTE - the site it links to is in FRENCH

Let's protect our environment locally and globally, but more importantly, let's do someting against such nonesense projects! Because, once again, this project is anything but "environmental"! (Online explanatory articles).

Indiana bill would give CO2 pipeline firms right to take private land

2010-02-22T22:47:00.000-05:00

From the web site - http://www.indianaeconomicdigest.net/main.asp?SectionID=31&SubSectionID=227&ArticleID=52240

1/25/2010 7:15:00 PM
Indiana bill would give CO2 pipeline firms right to take private land

By Chris O'Malley, The IBJ

comally@ibj.com

A bill filed in the Indiana General Assembly would give companies building pipelines to carry carbon dioxide the right to take private land in their path.

A consumer group opposing Senate Bill 115 argues the measure is yet another concession to the developer of a coal-to-methane plant proposed in Rockport, as well as to coal-fired electric utilities that may opt to transport CO2 to underground storage sites.

The measure declares that the transportation of CO2 by pipeline "is declared to be a public use and service, in the public interest, and a benefit to the welfare of Indiana," citing its potential to reduce carbon emissions and to promote economic development.

"Granting eminent domain to a private entity is reason enough, we think, to oppose this bill," said Kerwin Olson, program director for Indianapolis-based Citizens Action Coalition.

The group said the measure is to benefit Indiana Gasification, which in 2006 proposed building a $1.5 billion plant in Spencer County to convert high-sulfur coal to gas. Utilities could use the gas for heating and to generate electricity.

MORE

Geologic Carbon Dioxide Sequestration: An Analysis of Subsurface Property Law by Elizabeth J. Wilson and Mark A. de FigueiredoGeologic Carbon Dioxide Sequestration: An Analysis of Subsurface Property Law

2010-02-20T07:07:00.000-05:00

Geologic Carbon Dioxide Sequestration: An Analysis of Subsurface Property Law
by Elizabeth J. Wilson and Mark A. de Figueiredo 2006

VERY interesting.... Read it here

Exploratory study of some potential environmental impacts of CO2 sequestration in unmineable coal seams

2010-02-18T06:55:00.000-05:00

From the web site - http://inderscience.metapress.com/app/home/contribution.asp?referrer=parent&backto=issue,10,14;journal,28,88;linkingpublicationresults,1:110851,1

International Journal of Environment and Pollution
	Issue:	Volume 29, Number 4 / 2007




		http://inderscience.metapress.com/link.asp?id=68533067269455g4

An initial investigation into the potential environmental impacts of CO2 sequestration in unmineable coal seams has been conducted, focusing on changes in the produced water during enhanced coalbed methane (ECBM) production, using a CO2 injection process (CO2-ECBM). A high volatile bituminous coal, Pittsburgh No. 8, was reacted with synthetic produced water and gaseous carbon dioxide at 40C and 50 bar to evaluate the potential for mobilisation of toxic metals during CO2-ECBM/sequestration. Microscopic and X-ray diffraction analysis of the post-reaction coal samples clearly show evidence of chemical reaction and chemical analysis of the synthetic produced water shows substantial changes in composition. These results suggest that changes to the produced water chemistry and the potential for mobilising toxic trace elements from coal beds are important factors to be considered when evaluating deep, unmineable coal seams for CO2 sequestration.

Bad Utility Legislation in the 2010 Indiana General Assembly:

2010-01-28T20:03:00.002-05:00

From our friend in Indiana -

www.citact.org

Bad Utility Legislation in the 2010 Indiana General Assembly:
The Taxpayer Wallet and the Ratepayer Wallet are Still the Same Wallet!

http://www.citact.org/pdfs/fact_sheets/01-10/01-11-2010_2010_Leg_Session_Bad%20Bills.pdf

Current Bad Bills
HB 1081: Various Utility Matters
Authors: Dale Grubb, Eric Koch
Status: In the House Commerce, Energy, Technology and
Utilities Committee
Summary: CAC opposes this bill. Indiana utilities know they are going to have to move toward renewables and energy efficiency, so they want to define the term “renewable” to suit their needs. This bill defines coal as renewable, and would also force us to pay for all electric transmission lines and gas pipelines needed for biofuels facilities to go online in Indiana. Ratepayers pay for electrical service, not to subsidize industries that have nothing to do with the delivery of electricity to our homes. This bill is also loaded with trackers, which allow the utilities to raise our rates when their costs go up without having to lower our rates when their costs go down.

SB 69: Low-carbon and non-carbon dioxide emitting plants
Authors: Phil Boots
Status: In the Senate Utilities and Technology Committee
Summary: CAC opposes this bill. Non-carbon or low-carbon is industry code for nuclear power as well as the pipe dream known as Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS). This bill would expand Indiana's definition of Construction Work in Progress (CWIP) to include nuclear power plants and CCS. This means that we would be forced to pay for the construction of excessively expensive power plants before they produce any electricity, or even if they never produce any electricity. This bill assumes that we have nothing better to do with our money than to finance utility CCS experiments or provide interest-free loans so that utility companies can build unneccessary and enormously expensive power plants (the starting cost of a new nuclear power plant is $10 billion). This bill also allows the utilities to pad their pockets with more trackers.

The Great Indiana Carbon Pipeline
SB 115: Eminent domain for carbon dioxide pipeline
Authors: Beverly Gard
Status: In the Senate Corrections, Criminal and Civil Matters Committee
SB 211: Carbon dioxide storage and transportation
Authors: Beverly Gard
Status: In the Senate Energy and Environmental Affairs Committee
Summary: CAC opposes these bills. The utilities know that they are going to begin being held accountable for their carbon dioxide emissions, and they want to make sure that they can pass all of the costs and liability onto us. They are working to set the stage to begin Carbon Capture and Sequestration. The idea is to shoot the carbon dioxide deep into the ground, under our homes, businesses, and farms, and hope that it stays there. They have no idea how this will impact our health or our environment, so SB 211 proclaims that carbon dioxide is safe, forces us to pay for the transportation and “storage” of it, and forces us to be liable in the event of a catastrophe. It also removes regulatory authority from the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission. SB 115 allows them to claim eminent domain and take our property if it is in the
way of building a pipeline to get the carbon to the place where they want to “store” it. They are also using the "divide and conquer" strategy, by placing SB 115 in the Corrections, Criminal, and Civil Matters Committee, and SB 211 in the Energy and Environmental Affairs Committee. It was the Senate Utilities and Technology Committee that discussed and vetted this issue this summer during the Regulatory Flexibility Committee hearings, but the utilities know that they have a better chance of sneaking these bills through if they present it to legislators that have never dealt with this complicated and controversial issue.

Take Action!
Write, call, or e-mail your legislators, as well as the Chairs of the House and Senate Utility Committees!
• Tell the Senators to vote no on SB 69, SB 115, and SB 211!
• Tell the Representatives to vote no on HB 1081!
• Make sure to remind them that the taxpayer wallet and the ratepayer wallet are the same wallet and that if they don’t want to raise taxes, they should not consider legislation that will raise utility rates for unnecessary investments on behalf of utility profits!
• Let them know that coal and nuclear are NOT renewable energy!
• Tell them that the best investments for energy in Indiana are in energy efficiency,
wind, solar, and geothermal.
These are the technologies that will create jobs, and benefit the health, environment, and pocketbooks of ALL Hoosiers!

To look up and/or e-mail your legislators, visit:
http://www.in.gov/apps/sos/legislator/search/

Indiana Take Action Today!!! Eminent Domain Bill

2010-01-27T23:07:00.000-05:00

http://www.ibj.com/bill-would-give-co2-pipeline-firms-right-to-take-private-land/PARAMS/article/15967
Bill would give CO2 pipeline firms right to take private land
January 25, 2010

A consumer group opposing Senate Bill 115 argues the measure is yet another concession to the developer of a coal-to-methane plant proposed in Rockport, as well as to coal-fired electric utilities that may opt to transport CO2 to underground storage sites.

The measure declares that the transportation of CO2 by pipeline “is declared to be a public use and service, in the public interest, and a benefit to the
welfare of Indiana,” citing its potential to reduce carbon emissions and to promote economic development.

“Granting eminent domain to a private entity is reason enough, we think, to oppose this bill,” said Kerwin Olson, program director for Indianapolis-based Citizens Action Coalition.

The group said the measure is to benefit Indiana Gasification, which in 2006 proposed building a $1.5 billion plant in Spencer County to convert high-sulfur coal to gas. Utilities could use the gas for heating and to generate electricity.

Indiana Gasification, which planned to sell gas to Merrillville-based NIPSCO and Evansville-based Vectren, shelved plans in late-2008 after failing to reach long-term gas supply contracts with utilities, which feared such contracts could impair their long-term credit.

But last March, Gov. Mitch Daniels signed into a law a bill that would allow the Indiana Finance Authority to act as contracting agent between the gasification plant developer and the utilities buying its gas. Daniels has been a supporter of so-called clean-coal technology as an economic development tool and to protect the state’s coal and electric utility industries in the face of punitive carbon-mission regulations contemplated by Congress.

Olson said this marks the fourth year Indiana Gasification has sought various incentives from the state. The principal player in the venture, New York-based Leucadia National Corp., has sought more than $3.6 billion in federal loan guarantees from the Department of Energy for potential gasification plants.

“You’ve got a multi-billion dollar, multi-national corporation that is mandating their agenda through legislation because the business model just doesn’t support it,” Olson said of the proposed plant.

The measure could potentially grant eminent domain powers to numerous firms that plan to ship carbon dioxide trough pipelines.

Duke Energy is studying whether to inject underground the carbon dioxide to be produced at its $2.35 billion Edwardsport electric-generating plant, now under construction. Duke is looking at potential underground storage sites within 50 miles of the plant, but also has looked at piping CO2 to oil wells in southern Illinois as a way to enhance oil extraction.

In addition, Indiana is among Midwest states where Texas-based Denbury Resources is looking to run a 500-mile CO2 pipeline. It could receive carbon from power plants in the state and move it to oil fields in the Gulf of Mexico.

The sponsor of Senate Bill 115, Beverly Gard, R-Greenfield, could not be reached for comment.

Meanwhile, another measure co-sponsored by Gard is drawing fire from CAC. SB 211 would exclude the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission from ratemaking jurisdiction over private firms that operate carbon-storage facilities or pipelines. Public utilities that hired the private firms could file ask the commission for permission to recover costs from ratepayers.

Moreover, SB 211 declares that carbon dioxide “is not considered a pollutant, a nuisance, a hazardous waste or a deleterious substance.”

CAC argues that the release of CO2 from deep-underground storage sites or from pipelines poses unknown health and environmental risks.

Please help the Netherlands STOP CO2 under Barendrecht

2009-12-15T17:28:00.003-05:00

Dutch "green" minister favors Shell at the expense of Barendrecht guinea pigs.

BEWARE - "Black" project will be sold as "green" in Copenhagen.

The Dutch Minister of Environmental Affairs and former Shell Director, Jacqueline Cramer, has not forgotten her friends at Shell. She offers Shell a subsidy of 30 million Euro for a very profitable Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) project with storage under the town of Barendrecht (50.000 inhabitants). The Dutch government has recently chosen for an old-fashioned Coal future, building four new Coal-fired power stations. In order to reduce the negative effects the Dutch government promotes a CCS policy by storing CO2 throughout The Netherlands. Because of this policy a fifth Coal-fired power station will be needed, or else the equivalent energy amount has to be imported. Minister Cramer will sell this policy at the Copenhagen Conference as "green". She will not reveal that her policy is a Coal future for the next 30 years.

Minister Cramer defends the project by showing expert reports, concluding the experiment is a safe one. However, all these reports have been commissioned by her own department and are heavily criticized by independent and authoritative experts.

The inhabitants of the town of Barendrecht have protested for more than a year now, recently at a town hall visit of the minister. The people are outraged! The Stichting CO2isNEE (“CO2 is NO” Foundation) has been founded to protect the citizens from this irresponsible experiment. However, the stubborness of both the minister and the Dutch Government promises the fight to be a long one.

We, the people of Barendrecht, ask you to forward this message to as many people as possible in order to help us in our fight against this project of the Dutch Government. We are grateful for your help.

Contact: e-mail: stichtingCO2isNEE@gmail.com

I wish I knew what this video said.... but since it is not in English I don't know - I'm including it here for those who know the language

DOE targets rural Indiana geologic formation for CO2 storage field test

2009-11-13T08:22:00.000-05:00

Source: National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL)

Nov. 13, 2009
Read the article here

CO2 Injection Started at Mountaineer Plant across Ohio River

2009-09-23T01:55:00.002-04:00

September 22, 2009

Refitted to Bury Emissions, Plant Draws Attention

By MATTHEW L. WALD

NEW HAVEN, W.Va. — Poking out of the ground near the smokestacks of the Mountaineer power plant here are two wells that look much like those that draw natural gas to the surface. But these are about to do something new: inject a power plant’s carbon dioxide into the earth.

A behemoth built in 1980, long before global warming stirred broad concern, Mountaineer is poised to become the world’s first coal-fired power plant to capture and bury some of the carbon dioxide it churns out. The hope is that the gas will stay deep underground for millenniums rather than entering the atmosphere as a heat-trapping pollutant.

The experiment, which the company says could begin in the next few days, is riveting the world’s coal-fired electricity sector, which is under growing pressure to develop technology to capture and store carbon dioxide. Visitors from as far as China and India, which are struggling with their own coal-related pollution, have been trooping through the plant.

The United States still depends on coal-fired plants, many of them built decades ago, to meet half of its electricity needs. Some industry experts argue that retrofitting them could prove far more feasible than building brand new, cleaner ones.

Yet the economic viability of the Mountaineer plant’s new technology, known as carbon capture and sequestration, remains uncertain.

The technology is certain to devour a substantial amount of the plant’s energy output — optimists say 15 percent, and skeptics, 30 percent. Some energy experts argue that it could prove even more expensive than solar or nuclear power.

And as with any new technology, even the engineers are unsure how well it will work: will all of the carbon dioxide stay put?

Environmentalists who oppose coal mining and coal energy of any kind worry that sequestration could simply trade one problem, global warming, for another one, the pollution of water supplies. Should the carbon dioxide mix with water underground and form carbonic acid, they say, it could leach poisonous materials from rock deep underground that could then seep out.

Given the depths to which workers have drilled, they also fret that the project could cause earthquakes, although experts at theEnvironmental Protection Agency discount the risk of catastrophe.

More broadly, some environmentalists argue that the carbon storage effort could give corporations and consumers another excuse to drag their heels in supplanting coal dependence with an embrace of renewable energy sources like the sun and wind.

“Coal is the drug of choice of a major industry with a lot of political power,” said David H. Holtz, executive director of Progress Michigan, an environmental group.

Instead of adopting carbon capture, which Mr. Holtz likens to a methadone cure for addiction, he argues that the industry would do better to go cold turkey.

“There’s no evidence that burying carbon dioxide in the earth is a better strategy than aggressively pursuing other alternatives that clearly are better for the environment and will in the long run be less costly,” Mr. Holtz said.

But power company officials say the effort is the energy industry’s best hope of stanching carbon dioxide emissions over the next few decades.

“I really believe, in my heart of hearts, that coal is going to be burned around the world for years to come,” said Michael Morris, chairman and president of American Electric Power, which owns the plant here. “Retrofitting is going to be essential.”

American Electric Power is the nation’s largest electricity producer, with a coal-fired grid stretching across 11 states.

If all goes smoothly, this week engineers will begin pumping carbon dioxide, converted to a fluid, into a layer of sandstone 7,800 feet below the rolling countryside here and then into a layer of dolomite 400 feet below that.

The liquid will squeeze into tiny pores in the rock, displacing the salty water there, and assume a shape something like a squashed football, 30 to 40 feet high and hundreds of yards long.

American Electric Power’s plan is to inject about 100,000 tons annually for two to five years, about 1.5 percent of Mountaineer’s yearly emissions of carbon dioxide. Should Congress pass a law controlling carbon dioxide emissions and the new technology proves economically feasible, the company says, it could then move to capture as much as 90 percent of the gas.

For now the project consists of the two wells and a small chemical factory. In the factory, smoke diverted from the plant’s chimney is mixed with a chilled ammonia-based chemical. The chemical is then heated, releasing the carbon dioxide, which is pumped deep into the wells.

American Electric Power is spending $73 million on the capture and storage effort, which includes half the cost of the factory. Alstom, the manufacturer of the new equipment, paid for the other half of the factory, hoping to develop expertise that will win it a worldwide market. Alstom would not say what it spent, but public figures indicate that the two companies are jointly spending well over $100 million.

For energy planners, a crucial question is how much this technology would cost if refined and installed on a bigger scale. The answer remains elusive.

Still, many scientists emphasize that Mountaineer is within a dozen miles of four other big coal plants with a combined capacity of 6,000 megawatts, a concentration so great that industry insiders have nicknamed the area Megawatt Alley. If the technology spread to all of them in a cost-effective way, many say, it could have a broad impact on the coal industry.

S. Julio Friedmann, leader of the carbon management program at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, calls this corner of the Ohio River Valley a “must win” region for carbon dioxide storage.

Robert Socolow, a Princeton University engineering professor, echoed that sentiment. The nation’s fleet of coal-burning plants “completely dominates our national emissions,” Professor Socolow said.

It is also far easier to corral several million tons flowing from a single chimney than a comparable amount coming from tens of millions of car tailpipes or home heating systems, experts point out.

Far larger projects for capturing and storing carbon dioxide underground have been under way for several years in Europe and North Africa. In North Dakota, the Great Plains Synfuels plant, which converts methane to natural gas, takes the leftover carbon dioxide and pumps it through a pipeline to Canada to stimulate oil production there. But Mountaineer is the world’s first electricity plant to capture and store carbon dioxide.

A state permit issued to American Electric Power limits the pressure it can use to inject carbon dioxide into the rock. This is to reduce the risk that the injection will crack rock layers above that engineers are counting on to keep the carbon dioxide in place.

A nonprofit research group, Battelle Memorial Institute, has installed monitoring wells around the rock that will measure changes in pressure and temperature. Engineers can also send energy pulses through the earth between the wells and measure how fast these travel, as a guide to how the carbon dioxide is spreading.

Asked whether the injections of carbon dioxide could increase the frequency or magnitude of the small earthquakes that are common in the area, an E.P.A. official said it seemed unlikely.

“With proper site selection and good management, we should be able to implement this safely,” said Dina Kruger, director of the agency’s climate change division. Ms. Kruger also emphasized that the carbon dioxide would be monitored to see if it was seeping.

Some local residents are skeptical.

“It doesn’t matter to me if a scientist says it may or may not leak,” said Elisa Young, an anti-coal activist who lives nearby on the Ohio side of the river. “That’s not going to stop it from leaking when push comes to shove.”

At the same time, many others in this coal-dependent region suggest that the notion that carbon dioxide is a menace has been overplayed.

Charles A. Powell, the manager of the Mountaineer plant, who has worked there since it opened three decades ago, pointed out that the gas is given off by every human and animal.

“You are breathing out?” he asked a visitor dryly.

Dangers of Carbon Sequestration Why it Should not Be Used excessively

2009-09-21T00:27:00.003-04:00

© Sudheendra Dhulipala

This article discusses the negative effects of carbon sequestration and why it's not a perfect solution to excessive carbon gas emission problems.

CO2 Transport Versus the 50-State Sequestration Strategy, Pa

2009-09-21T00:17:00.003-04:00

Current Administration and congressional climate proposals depend heavily on geological sequestration to reduce CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants and other major sources and tend to presume that sources in every state will have access to nearby underground storage capacity. This is the second post in a three-part series reviewing obstacles to a 50-state sequestration strategy and suggesting the need for a national infrastructure to support medium to long-range transport of CO2.

Even if additional research and site characterization could resolve geological uncertainties regarding widespread local CO2 storage, companies also will have to overcome the public and political opposition that locally undesirable land use (LULU) energy projects engender. While CO2 sequestration provides important global benefits, local communities are likely to balk at hosting a sequestration project injecting millions of tons of liquid CO2 as a waste product under or near their communities.

The saga of Used Nuclear Fuel Storage at Yucca Mountain in Nevada illustrates the challenge of siting even one nationally-important, but locally-opposed, facility. First identified as the nation’s prospective high-level nuclear waste storage site in 1987 and approved by Congress in 1994, the Yucca Mountain high-level nuclear waste storage facility received over 9 billion dollars in funding through 2008 despite vociferous opposition from local stakeholders and, in some cases, key federal constituencies. In early 2009, the Obama Administration proposed to defund the project. While only Congress can cancel the project, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has committed to doing just that. Irrespective of the merits of the decision to defund Yucca, it is a significant setback for the domestic nuclear energy industry, as the reversal leaves the nation twenty years behind in developing a long-term disposal strategy for high-level nuclear waste.

Even relatively innocuous renewable energy projects face siting difficulties. Indeed, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently initiated a campaign to document the wide variety of energy projects that have been stopped or delayed across the nation by local opposition. The siting challenge illustrates an important reality check for policymakers and investors: a prospective site may contain optimal subsurface geologic characteristics, but if developers cannot negotiate the local siting process, the technical feasibility of a location is irrelevant.

Siting CCS facilities on federal lands may be one way to reduce the ability of local opposition to stop a project. The Department of Interior has estimated that 5.5 percent of the onshore U.S. CO2 storage capacity is beneath potentially leasable Federal lands. But, federal lands bring limitations of their own. First, federal lands are not uniformly distributed across regions and states, and many areas of the country (e.g., the northeast, southeast and midwest) lack large swaths of federal lands on which facilities could be sited. The disconnect is even more significant when major emissions sources are considered. According to a recent DOE Report, while 65% of emissions come from east of the Mississippi River, 83% to 86% of storage capacity on federal lands lies west of the Mississippi River. In other words, a siting strategy that relies on federal lands for citing will require investment on CO2 transport to match source generation to sequestration capacity.

Second, federal lands are subject to a variety of restrictions and extensive regulatory review requirements on the use of federal lands. Any commercial-scale sequestration funded by federal dollars or constructed on federal lands will be subject, at a minimum, to the environmental review requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act and the historic review requirements of the National Historic Preservation Act. These statutes delay construction schedules, create potential avenues for litigation from opposing parties, and inject risk and expense into large-scale projects. The federal government would also have to determine that the proposed sequestration projects would be consistent with other approved uses for a federal land, a determination that can involve many different federal agencies working through multi-year planning processes.

Whether CCS project developers use federal, state, or privately-owned land for sequestration projects, they will have to demonstrate that their siting choices are safe for the local communities, safe for the local environment, and consistent with the legal standards governing such land-use. While well-funded, well-planned, and well-organized projects will be capable of overcoming these obstacles, such approvals will come at a financial and political cost. Policymakers need to factor in the realistic costs of addressing community concerns and project approvals into their policy calculus if they are to develop a realistic understanding of when, where, and how the U.S. will be able to site the sequestration capacity needed to meet carbon mitigation goals - at a financial and political price that the public will bare.

http://climateintel.com/2009/06/22/co2-transport-versus-the-50-state-sequestration-strategy-part-2-not-under-my-back-yard/

Geological Sequestration Projects Hitting Public Opposition Wall

2009-09-21T00:11:00.001-04:00

Last year, Swedish Company Vattenfall announced its plans to go on-line with a major pilot program to test carbon capture and sequestration at a coal-fired power plant. The company recently acknowledged that permitting snags fueled by local opposition render it unable to commence geologic sequestration of captured CO2. Vattenfall intended to begin capturing CO2 at its 30-megawatt Schwarze Pumpe facility, located in Spremberg, Germany, and sequestering it in the nearby Altmark depleted gas field by March or April 2009. Residents of the host-city, however, have expressed concerns about the safety of geological sequestration, preventing the final permitting approval for the site and creating questions about when - or if - the site could be available for any CCS operations.

Vattenfall’s experience at this project is not an isolated incident. Vattenfall reported delays in obtaining approvals for one of its Danish storage projects pointing, in part, to public opposition by local stakeholders. In June, German news sources reported that activists were protesting plans by electric utility RWE to transport captured CO2 by pipeline from a powerplant near Cologne to a sequestration site on Germany’s North Sea Coast. The Wall Street Journal also reported in April that Royal Dutch Shell had run into challenges siting a sequestration facility in Barendrecht, Netherlands, due to grass roots opposition from local residents.

Public opposition is likely to be a critical strategic and legal consideration for US projects. On Friday, August 21, Battelle, the lead partner in a Midwest Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership project announced that it was abandoning plans to participate in a $92 million public-private demonstration project to site a geological sequestration project in Western Ohio. While the partner cited only “business reasons” for its decision, the reported public opposition to the project could not have helped.

These setbacks illustrate the significant challenges that the siting and permit-approval process can pose, particularly in the face of public opposition, to an otherwise promising project. This will be particularly true during the early stages of a CCS deployment. US policymakers and investors would do well to watch and learn from these early case studies, and to ensure that they devote the legal, political and community relations resources needed to ensure that proposed projects move forward in a realistic and timely fashion.

Link to the above article

http://politicalecology.xyvy.info/?p=1566

Battelle Back in Darke County and now Mercer Co too

2009-09-19T07:14:00.005-04:00

Battelle is once again looking at Darke County, Ohio, this time including Mercer County, Ohio, our neighbors to the north and home of State Rep. Jim Zehringer, who bitterly opposed the proposed CO2 sequestration project for Darke County. This time they are asking to do seismic testing for gas and oil recovery - aka "EOR" Enhanced Oil Recovery. Ahem.

When the Darke County project was canceled by Battelle, they were going to Edwardsport, IN. We understand, from our friends in IN, that it was not suitable and they are looking at eastern IN and are now back in our area of Ohio - this time requesting to do seismic testing "for EOR to recover oil and gas."

Many articles/studies suggest EOR is the easiest way to get into a community without Public Opposition - as a way to fly under the radar, so to speak.

An study from the University of Texas at Austin suggests it is way to be accepted by a community while building CO2 storage.

Wouldn't transparency be easier and build trust?

There is a lot of money to be made for the companies who successfully developed CCS - and a lot of risks for the communities who have the large-scale CO2 projects.

Perhaps the companies, colleges and universities pushing Carbon Capture and Sequestration could put it in their urban area instead of rural America. On this blog is a study that involved Judith Bradbury, our liaison with Battelle, in which she said Columbus, OH was too densely populated and too urban to get a CCS project.

If it's not safe for Columbus, OH.........it isn't safe for rural America.

Every dollar spent on CCS is a dollar wasted - money that should have been spent on developing renewable energy.

The World's Largest CO2 Storage Research Project with EOR

2009-09-19T07:10:00.002-04:00

Note - "CO2 Storage with EOR" -- Storage = Sequestration

http://www.cslforum.org/publications/documents/IEAGHGWeyburnProjectPoster0307.pdf

Duke Energy CEO Questions Viability of ‘Clean’ Coal Technology, Future of Coal

2009-09-19T07:00:00.002-04:00

"Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, raised questions on Wednesday about the viability of capturing and storing carbon dioxide emissions from coal plants underground, and suggested that coal may not even be part of the energy mix by 2050.

“I actually can see a future where coal is not in the equation in 2050,” Rogers told reporters at an event in Washington.

He argued that it’s unlikely that the United States will be able to develop and bring to scale carbon-capture-and-storage – often called “clean coal” technology. “I think there’s no way we can scale in this country,” he said. “It’s more likely that China will develop and bring CCS to scale. I’d like to be China for a day so we can get CCS done. They’re more likely to get it scaled and deployed than we are. We’re going to be buying their technology.”

He also acknowledged that concerns about coal extraction methods like mountaintop removal may make coal more expensive in the near-term. “I’m under incredible pressure on moutaintop mining,” said Rogers. “Most of the coal we use in the southern part of the country is from mountaintop mining. I’m doing the math now and looking to determine my contracts and posing the question to my team, what if we made a policy decision that we’re not going to buy coal as a consequence of mountaintop mining.”
Read the rest of the story here............

The Role of CO2 Enhanced Oil Recovery In Ohio’s Economy and Energy Future

2009-09-19T06:36:00.002-04:00

http://www.pewclimate.org/docUploads/KleinhenCO2_Enhanced_Oil_Rec_rpt%208%2008_.pdf

The original article does not contain bold or highlighted text, that has been added by this blogger.

Other entries on this blog refer to EOR as the easiest way to get CO2 into a community without their opposition so they can go ahead and build their CO2 storage areas. Please read past entries to find those entries. EOR is suspect.

Note the reference to CO2 used for EOR - "Storage" = Sequestration

From the above link (2008)

I. Purpose of the study

"The Pew Center on Global Climate Change seeks to explore the potential development and use of coal gasification and carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology in Ohio. Primary benefits of developing and deploying CCS in Ohio include power generated using readily available coal while achieving substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from this generation. Additional benefits include many chemical by-products, especially captured CO2 which can be used commercially for Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR). Prior research completed by Kleinhenz & Associates for the Pew Center analyzed the economic activity factors related to coal gasification and how the location of a number of key support industries in Ohio could provide the state with a competitive advantage in this area.i This prior research did not address injection of CO2 into deep saline formations (sequestration), or storage of CO2 in association with EOR. The study also did not offer an estimate of the required pipeline network or the industries and employment affiliated with development of an Ohio CO2 market. Ohio firms have been major suppliers of the heavy equipment utilized in the oil and gas industry throughout North America. A CO2 EOR and sequestration industry would utilize similar types of heavy equipment in large volumes.

Further development of coal-gasification plants in Ohio depends upon a full understanding of the development of a CO2 market. The CO2 byproduct can be captured during the gasification process and transported via pipeline and injected in an oil or gas well to enhance recovery. With minor modifications to the process, volumes of CO2 stored through EOR can be documented. Carbon dioxide might also be sequestered (long-term) in a suitable underground reservoir containing no hydrocarbons (deep saline formation). Texas serves as a good example of a state in which the commercialization of CO2 for enhanced oil recovery as well as state regulations are well defined, while the CO2 industry in Ohio is neither defined nor commercialized. However, the Ohio House and Senate recently adopted an energy bill that would establish a regulatory framework for CO2,ii and provide credits to utilities that installed equipment for capturing carbon dioxide."

Again note - "Potential CO2 sinks" -- Sinks = CO2 Sequestration (Storage)

"Estimating the potential impact on Ohio-based industries requires a framework that includes the creation of a conceptual Ohio CO2 pipeline network. This network links proposed major sources of CO2 – such as coal gasification plants and biofuel plants – to some potential CO2 sinks with strong potential as EOR sites."

Al Gore's Mistake About CO2 and Climate

2009-09-03T22:28:00.001-04:00

Ohio EPA has a new site and new look

2009-08-29T08:50:00.001-04:00

http://www.epa.ohio.gov/

From our friends in the Netherlands - the opposition group

2009-08-24T00:04:00.002-04:00

SUMMARY IN ENGLISH
In June 2009 the city council of Barendrecht, a small city south of Rotterdam, voted against the plans to store large quantities of CO2 in the underground of the village. This local decision was based on facts not on emotions. The three most important arguments for the local CDA party to vote against CO2 storage are:

There are no guarantees for the safety of the residents, nor are all questions regarding the safety of CO2 storage answered. Especially because of the infinite period of storage.
There are questions whether the scientific research concerning CO2 storage in Barendrecht is objective and unbiased.
There is no basis, nor support for CO2 storage in Barendrecht.

The Dutch national government can overrule the decision of the local government. Whether or not the national government will overrule Barendrecht will be clear in the autumn of 2009 when the minister of Economic Affairs and the minister for the Environment will decide to continue with CO2 storage in and under Barendrecht.

If you have questions or want more local information feel free to send us an e-mail: \n Dit e-mail adres is beschermd door spambots, u heeft Javascript nodig om dit onderdeel te kunnen bekijken "> CO2@cdabarendrecht.nl

De gemeenteraad van Barendrecht heeft op 29 juni 2009 definitief nee gezegd tegen het demonstratieproject ondergrondse CO2 - opslag in Barendrecht. De gemeenteraad heeft het besluit gebaseerd op feiten, cijfers en argumenten. De veiligheid voor onze bewoners en toekomstige generaties is niet maximaal gewaarborgd.

Consequenties Principebesluit 29 juni 2009

Het college en de klankbordgroep van de gemeenteraad hebben verder besproken welke concrete consequenties het principebesluit van 29 juni (nee tegen het CO₂-project) heeft voor het gemeentelijke beleid. Geconcludeerd is dat de gemeente niet meewerkt aan onderzoeken en geen vergunningen verleent die op een of andere manier kunnen worden beschouwd als voorbereiding op de CO₂-opslag. Indien de gemeente wordt verzocht gegevens of rapportages te verstrekken, worden die slechts verstrekt indien de gemeente dit op grond van de Wet openbaarheid van bestuur (Wob) verplicht is.

Besluit provincie en ministers
De verwachting is dat de provincie en de minsters eind 2009 een definitief besluit nemen over de plannen in Barendrecht.

Midwest Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership cancels Ohio CCS project despite DOE funding

2009-08-21T23:23:00.007-04:00

The 35-member Midwest Regional Carbon Sequestration Project (MRCSP) has cancelled a $92.8m proposal to inject one million tons of carbon dioxide over four years from an ethanol plant in Greenville, western Ohio.

Battelle Memorial Institute, a major, non-profit research and development organisation which manages MRCSP, issued a terse communiqué saying the decision was based on “business considerations.”

“That’s all I can tell you,” Katy Delaney, a Battelle spokeswoman says in response to queries from Recharge.

The move came after the US Energy Department in May 2008 awarded MRCSP $61m to fund the third phase of carbon capture and storage research over 10 years at the Greenville site.

The CO2 would have been injected into the Mount Simon Sandstone formation, which is more than 3,000 feet beneath the surface. It stretches across much of the Midwest region and has the potential to store more than 100 years of CO2 emissions from major point sources in the region, according to DOE.

Specifically, the third phase, for which MRCSP members would have contributed almost $32m, was to validate that the injection and storage could be done on a safe, permanent and economic basis.

Local officials and state representatives had increasingly opposed the project fearing it would lower property values and increase seismic activity.

Click here to continue

As Paul Harvey would say, click here for "the rest of the story"

Protesters Win CO2 Battle In Darke County, Ohio

2009-08-20T21:33:00.004-04:00

Protesters Win CO2 Battle In Darke Co.

As soon as we received word that the project was canceled, we started a phone chain to get our committee on the circle to take a photo for the Advocate - even during the tornado warnings!
In a little over 90 minutes the majority of us were there, in our green shirts, celebrating!

We hope to have a big celebration and engage our community - after the fair is over!

See us on WHIOTV by clicking here. Many thanks to WHIOTV for your coverage!

Posted: 6:35 am EDT August 20, 2009Updated: 3:52 pm EDT August 20, 2009

GREENVILLE, Ohio -- A vocal group of citizens in Greenville are celebrating a victory in their efforts to keep tons of CO2 waste from being pumped into the ground in Darke County.The Columbus-based Battelle Research Center announced that Greenville is no longer being considered for a carbon sequestration project.In a news release, Battelle said, “Due to business considerations, Greenville, Ohio, is no longer being considered for a carbon sequestration project.”The news ended 14 months of protest by Citizens Against Carbon Sequestration. The group protested the unknowns of what the future could bring if CO2 waste would be allowed 3.500 feet below ground.The group used yard signs, public meetings and commission meetings, along with a prayer rally to gain public support.A recent poll showed that more than 90 percent of those who participated in the poll were against carbon sequestration.

Darke County CITIZENS CELEBRATE - MRCSP Phase III CO2 Project in Greenville Ohio - WILL NOT HAPPEN

2009-08-20T07:16:00.005-04:00

Battelle announced today that Greenville, OH was no longer on the list for consideration of a large-scale CO2 project. A jubilant committee celebrates on the town "circle" - this community has never been so united! Look for us in both the Democrat and Republican booths at the Great Darke County Fair.......

THANK YOU DARKE COUNTY FOR YOUR SUPPORT!

Read the full article here!

PowerPoint - Property & Regulatory Issues CO2 Sequestration

2009-08-18T21:19:00.002-04:00

www.stoel.com/webfiles/RMMLI_July2008.ppt

National Mining Association Carbon Capture and Storage - Barriers to CCS

2009-08-18T00:37:00.002-04:00

http://www.nma.org/pdf/fact_sheets/ccs.pdf Read entire article here

I find this to be an interesting statement - Avoiding application of the federal Superfund program to in• jections of CO2;

At present, uncertainty over siting requirements and long-term liability issues associated with the underground storage of CO2 have deterred project developers, financiers and insurers from moving forward with CCS. However, CCS as a tool for mitigating CO2 emissions and ensuring a secure and affordable energy supply for America represents a vital public interest that merits a federal-level program to clarify and resolve these long-term liability issues and to clear the way for the rapid and widespread commercialization of the technology. Some of the key issues that must be resolved in order to foster widespread commercialization of CCS include:
Determining responsibility for post-closure monitoring;•
Avoiding application of the federal Superfund program to in• jections of CO2;
Avoiding characterization of CO• 2 as a waste and CCS activities as waste disposal to avoid triggering expensive “cradle to grave” regulations of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA); and
Resolving property rights issues, including pore space owner• ship, trespass and interstate issues relating to CO2 transportation and placement.

Property Rights Issues Could Stymie Geologic Carbon Sequestration, an Industrial Info News Alert

2009-08-18T00:21:00.001-04:00

SUGAR LAND, TX--(Marketwire - August 17, 2009) - Written by John Egan for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas) -- Efforts in the U.S. to geologically sequester carbon-dioxide emissions could be delayed or derailed unless state and federal governments find a way to address property rights issues, lawyers at Stoel Rives LLP (Portland, Oregon) told Industrial Info. The Waxman-Markey energy bill, currently being considered by the U.S. Senate, awards bonus carbon-dioxide allowances to utilities that will deploy carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technologies at coal-fired power plants by 2015. Property rights are critical to geologic carbon sequestration, because the underground areas needed to store carbon dioxide are extremely large and could cross state borders. The potential interstate nature of carbon sequestration projects means that the federal government could take a leading role in creating a consistent legal framework for acquiring the property rights for these projects.

For details, view the entire article by subscribing to Industrial Info's Premium Industry News at http://www.industrialinfo.com/showNews.jsp?newsitemID=149353, or browse other breaking industrial news stories at www.industrialinfo.com.

Industrial Info Resources (IIR) is the leading provider of global market intelligence specializing in the industrial process, heavy manufacturing and energy related markets. For more than 26 years, Industrial Info has provided plant and project opportunity databases, market forecasts, high resolution maps, and daily industry news. For more information send inquiries to powergroup@industrialinfo.com or visit us online at www.industrialinfo.com.

Carbon DISASTER

2009-08-17T22:55:00.000-04:00

Lawrence Solomon: Carbon disaster

Posted: August 15, 2009, 1:38 AM by NP Editor

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/08/14/lawrence-solomon-carbon-disaster.aspx

Don’t worry about the risks of earthquakes or suffocation or water contamination. Carbon capture is good, really

By Lawrence Solomon

f you live in or near a community that manufactures chemicals or cement, or that has a refinery or a coal or natural gas electricity generating station, or that has abandoned mines or other suitable geological formations, you may soon be asked to save the planet from global warming by hosting an underground carbon dioxide storage facility.

You and your neighbours will be told not to worry about carbon dioxide poisoning your water supplies. Yes, ruptures or large leaks of the gas could not only make the water undrinkable for you but also kill vegetation and aquatic life, the authorities will acknowledge, but inventors are working on new, improved technology that will prevent underground pipes and other infrastructure from leaking.

You and your neighbours will also be told not to worry about mass asphyxiation in your sleep in the event of an unexpected release of carbon dioxide, a gas that’s heavier than air — to their knowledge, that only happened to humans once before, in rural Africa when a release of naturally stored carbon dioxide from Lake Nyos in Cameroon enshrouded and suffocated 1,700 people. The authorities in Canada promise to take this risk seriously and double-promise to design state-of-the-art carbon dioxide storage plants that won’t fail fed by pipelines that won’t blow out. Plus, they’ll install monitors in case plants fail or pipelines blow out.

Finally, you and your neighbours will be told not to worry about the possibility that your community will become susceptible to earthquakes. Yes, the authorities will admit when pressed, these carbon-storage facilities are expected to become one of the top five triggers of earthquakes — induced seismicity, it’s called — but hey, somebody’s got to save the planet and the authorities have selected you.

In turn, you and your neighbours, having received all these assurances from the authorities — and having confirmed that the government plans to exempt the carbon-storage industry from liability in the event of an accident — will rise up in opposition and try to run the authorities out of town.

I am guessing, of course, at what you and your neighbours will ultimately decide to do — maybe your community can be bribed into acquiescence. But I am not guessing that our federal and provincial governments have a crash program underway to make Canada an early leader in the carbon-storage industry.

Last month, the Alberta government, which has already committed $2-billion to carbon-storage schemes, announced the province’s first host communities as if it had selected lottery winners. “Alberta announces three winning projects for carbon-capture funding,” reported the Calgary Herald. “[They] will each receive a portion of $2-billion in carbon capture and storage funding, if final negotiations between the province and companies are successful.”

The neighbours to the winners — Edmonton-area ventures involving Shell Canada, Chevron Canada and Epcor, among others — may feel more like guinea pigs after the public consultations begin, and concerns get aired. The government expects the storage facilities to be up and running by 2015, meaning that the pressure will soon be on to ram these projects through. Look for environmental groups to be enlisted as government persuaders — the Alberta-based Pembina Institute has already recommended that environmental groups take on this enabling role. And look for the environmental groups to be held in the same regard as the governments and companies they are working with.

Last September, a carbon-storage demonstration scheme in northern Germany — Vattenfall’s Schwarze Pumpe project in Spremberg — opened to wide acclaim. The $110-million facility was touted as the first to trap carbon dioxide at a coal plant before transporting it for burial. Last week it came out that the burial never happened. Because of local opposition, the town had refused to give Vattenfall a permit for burial. Rather than storing the gas underground, Vattenfall revealed during a conference, it has been quietly (and safely) venting the carbon dioxide straight into the atmosphere all along. Similarly, local opposition foiled Shell’s plans to store carbon dioxide in depleted gas fields under the Dutch town of Barendrecht, near Rotterdam, in March. After sitting through a public consultation, and receiving assurances from Shell that the technology is proven to be safe, 1,300 residents lodged their protests.

The Numby phenomenon — Not Under My Back Yard — is not limited to opposition by local residents: industries with a stake in safe water are also alarmed. The American Water Works Association, a trade group representing 4,700 water utilities that produce 80% of America’s drinking water, has added the carbon-storage industry to coal and the other resource industries that threaten its interests and those of its customers.

“Our biggest concern is the prevention of degradation of underground sources of drinking water” by interfering with the complex chemistry of water in underground settings, the association told Congress in detailed testimony last year, citing the numerous ways that carbon dioxide burial threatens aquifers with profound contamination, and noting that many communities don’t have alternative sources of affordable drinking water.

The association also noted that carbon-storage technology is unproven and may not even succeed in its primary goal, of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Why risk a nation’s water supplies without the evidence being in, it asked Congress. Why indeed.

Financial Post
lawrencesolomon@nextcity.com
Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and Urban Renaissance Institute and author of The Deniers: The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud.

Village of Arcanum Resolution Against CO2 Sequestration

2009-08-17T21:59:00.002-04:00

Arcanum, Ohio is located in Darke County, about 7 miles from Greenville, they have recently started their own branch of Citizens Against CO2 Sequestration to protect their area of the county. THANK YOU ARCANUM! And a huge thank you to the leadership for drafting a resolution to oppose CO2 Sequestration in Arcanum, Ohio!

Click on the photo to enlarge the resolution.

State Representative Jim Zehringer Opposes Large-Scale CCS Project

2009-08-15T04:48:00.012-04:00

To read the lettter - click on it and it will enlarge

Greenville, OH (Darke County) is the proposed site for one on the 7 large-scale CO2 sequestration demonstration projects (EXPERIMENTS) to bury 1 Million tons of CO2 Waste in the saline aquifer (aka Mount Simon Sandstone) FOREVER - on the site of the The Andersons Marathon Ethanol Plant aka TAME.

The citizens of Darke County OPPOSE this project - with each passing week the number of yard signs opposing the project increases. The citizens have NO VOTE.

This is OUR HOME - the people and companies involved do not live here.

This county, along with the city and every elected official oppose this project. Recently, State Representative Jim Zehringer wrote a letter to the Ohio Department of Transportation stating his "bitter" opposition to this proposed project, asking them to honor the request of the community and not allow the seismic testing trucks to use the roads under their control in Darke County. With only one exception, the landowners have refused to allow the seismic testing on their private property.

(Note- the seismic testing is a necessary part of preparation to apply for the UIC permit - the last permit they need before injection)

On behalf of the people of Darke County, THANK YOU, Representative Zehringer, not only your support but for standing up to protect your constituents from this unproven experiment that comes with many risks and no benefits.

CO2 Opposition Yard Signs

2009-08-14T18:49:00.004-04:00

Wednesday afternoon we received another 100 yard signs, less than 48 hours later they are GONE!

More on the way!

900 up..........and counting!

Darke County, Ohio OPPOSES CO2 Sequestration ------ as State Representative, Dick Adams said last evening to the attendees at the High School in Arcanum, OH - "I haven't met ONE PERSON who is for this project! We need to protect our environment and agriculture in Ohio!"

We are very fortunate to have the support of our elected officials!

Greenpeace Hot Air Balloon Delivers Message - NO FUTURE IN COAL

2009-08-13T08:25:00.002-04:00

Click here to read full article

Hunter Valley, Australia — Prime Minister Rudd wants to stop dangerous climate change and we want to give him the chance to show that all his talk is not just hot air. So, at dawn today, the Greenpeace hot air balloon delivered a message to Kevin in spectacular fashion: "Save the climate - No future in coal".

The balloon flew over two coal-fired power stations in the New South Wales Hunter Valley, launched by a team of Greenpeace staff and volunteers camped in the Hunter Valley. As the eyecatching aircraft flew above coal stacks, it attracted plenty of attention on the ground.

CCS enables COAL to have a future AND burn even MORE coal! OPPOSE CCS - too expensive, too risky, unproven!

30,000 Australians sign a petition against CCS

2009-08-13T07:34:00.004-04:00

See the link here

30 000 Australians signed a statement against CCS, and backing a new international report on carbon capture and storage (CCS)., which calls for world governments to stop the climate crisis by urgently investing in renewable energy and energy efficiency rather than CCS. Today the petition was delivered to Treasurer Wayne Swan at the Treasury offices, Canberra, Australia

Read more here

"Faith into Action" Community Meeting - August 12, 2009

2009-08-13T00:09:00.002-04:00

Advocate Photo - click here to be taken to The Daily Advocate for the full story

Wednesday, August 12, 2009
7 pm
Harmon Field, Greenville, OH

City of Greenville, Ohio Opposed to Large-scale CO2 Sequestration Project - City Officials Put On the Spot

2009-08-11T11:59:00.000-04:00

Greenville Officials Put on The Spot at Tuesday Council Meeting

From WTGR Radio in Greenville, OH (Link to the story is here)

“I have been against this project from the beginning. There are a thousand other options available to reduce CO2 emissions.”

Those were the words of Greenville Councilman John Baumgartner at Tuesday’s council meeting as council and other city officials were challenged to give their personal opinions of the potential carbon sequestration project at the ethanol plant in Greenville. One by one, every official in the room did just that during the public hearing portion of the meeting as two Greenville citizens, Lynn Bliss and Enid Goubeax, put officials on the spot in front of a packed council room, filled with members of the Citizens Against Carbon Sequestration. Though neither Bliss or Goubeaux were directly representing the group on Tuesday, they shared the same sentiment that the city’s recent official press release did not go far enough in addressing the controversial issue. Those present also took issue with a particular phrase in the press release that they felt was inaccurate. That statement indicated that there was a “rift in the community” over the project.

“We want to show that there is no rift in the community, but there may be a rift between the community and its’ government. The community, though, has been untied by this issue”, stated Bliss.

Goubeaux added that she had lived in the community since 1961 and had never seen area residents as untied as they are currently in their opposition to this potential project. What Goubeaux said next, however, is what began perhaps the lengthiest public hearing portion of a council meeting in many years…

“We are going to be calling each of you in the next few days to ask you to express your personal view (on this project)”, said Goubeaux, “ A no comment will be interpreted as a vote of support.”

Though reactions to the aggressive tactic varied by official, all present opted not to wait for the phone call and answered directly on Tuesday evening.

All the statements indicated that city officials are against the project for many of the same reasons that residents have expressed. Councilman Leon Rogers stated, “I am more against it the more that I learn about it.” Referring to the fact that the federal government may play a role in the final decision he said, “If it will be anywhere, it should be under Washington D.C.”

That was one of many statements that drew applause from attendees. However, much of the discussion during the evening was heated as officials stated they took offense to the indication that they had not researched the issues. Rogers asked residents yesterday not to mistake silence for indifference, saying, “We have been doing what you were doing, gathering information. ”

During dialogue between Anne Vehry, a founder of The Citizens Against Carbon Sequestration and City Law Director Jeff Amick, Amick expressed what other officials had already indicated- that the city may be powerless to stop the project. However, when asked what chance he thought there was of The Andersons moving forward with the project, he guessed it was less than 20%, “I can tell you, they don’t have any intention of the project going thru at this time. But until there is an actual project to stop, we can’t do anything. If we initiate legislation, we will have the burden of proof that the project is a public nuisance. “

Amick said that might be difficult to prove and would certainly be expensive. He added, as other officials did on Tuesday, that The Anderson’s was the most ethical and honest company with which he had ever done business. One common theme did emerge from the statements, and it was one that many did not want to hear. Most officials present, who have been researching the project for over a year, stated they thought carbon sequestration was likely inevitable even if the drilling was stopped here in Greenville.

“We are on the Mount Simon Sandstone. It covers numerous states and I believe that whether CO2 is pumped in at the Andersons in a test program or whether it’s pumped in the ground in Michigan or Indiana, the City of Greenville is going to be on top of sequestered CO2”, explained Greenville Safety/Service Director John Schmidt, “I just don’t want the test wells to be here”.

"Faith Into Action" - Wednesday, August 12, 7 PM

2009-08-11T01:09:00.004-04:00

The Citizens Against CO2 Sequestration are inviting everyone to join them (rain or shine) at their county-wide “Faith Into Action Gathering” on Wednesday, August 12 from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. at the Greenville High School Football Stadium.

Including music, prayer and an update from members of the group, the gathering will also feature Hershel Fee, Pastor of the Lighthouse Christian Church; Pete Kontra, Pastor of the Oakland Church of the Brethren; and Bill Lyle, Pastor of the EUM Church.

When the Citizens Against CO2 formed less than six months ago, little did they know that a “miracle” was about to occur. After starting with a group of twelve, their message spread and their numbers grew. Today, thousands of Greenville and Darke County residents have joined their quest to stop the sequestration of carbon dioxide (CO2) at the Andersons Marathon Ethanol Plant in Greenville’s Industrial Park. At no time has their quest been against the plant or its operation. Instead, it has been against the experimental sequestration project only.

As if the increase in their numbers is not miracle enough, other citizens’ action groups are forming in Arcanum and in Gettysburg. It is expected that more groups will follow.

During their first Citizens Action meeting at the Lighthouse Christian Center, 1,000 residents attended to show their support. Almost as many turned away because there was no place left to park outside and only standing room was left inside. As traffic lined up to turn into the center, Sebring Warner Road and State Route 127 were blocked for two miles or more. By their huge attendance, residents stated in no uncertain terms that they do not want the high-risk experimental sequestration of CO2 to take place near their communities or in their county.

Speaking at that meeting were Nachy Kanfer, Associate Regional Representative of the Sierra Club; Kathleen Boutis, President of the Green Coalition; and Kerwin Olson, Project Director and Lobbyist for Citizens Action of Indiana. They all agreed the Citizens Against CO2 Sequestration have accomplished in months what few citizens-action groups have accomplished in years.

Darke County Engineer Jim Surber said he has not seen this much community support since he first moved to Darke County over 32 years ago. He, Mike Bowers, Mayor of Greenville, and the Greenville, Neave, and Van Buren Township Trustees, have temporarily halted seismic testing along county and township roads. Seismic testing is the preliminary step to the beginning of the sequestration process.

On Tuesday, August 4, The Greenville City Council and Administration were asked to state their opinions individually on the proposed CO2 sequestration project. They had already issued a collective statement earlier.

Expressing concerns for the city and its residents as well as for their children and future generations, council members and administrative officers unanimously agreed that although it had risks and was wrong for Greenville, they felt powerless to stop it because it is being funded by the Federal Government on private land. Jeff Amick, Attorney for the city, said that he, more than anyone, has studied ways to prevent this project. He said he would wear a green shirt and ride a bus to Washington D.C. if he could stop it. John Schmidt said he did not want to look back one day as people pointed to Greenville as the place where a CO2 experiment had gone wrong.

Because of the overwhelming opposition of Darke County residents, the Darke County Commissioners passed a Resolution in late July, stating they are in opposition to the sequestration project due to its unknown risks and potential harm to Darke County. They also asked The Andersons Marathon Ethanol Plant officials to honor their request to halt the proposed CO2 project. Although plant officials have since responded, their response has not offered any definite assurance that the project will be discontinued.

Working hard to stop the sequestration project in Greenville, Jan Teaford, who is co-chairman of the Citizens Against CO2 Sequestration, has used her computer skills to set up web and blog sites. At the blog site, she and several other members of the group have provided links that lead to scientific and geological information concerning CO2 sequestration. As a result, they have brought the proposed sequestration site to the attention of the world. Not only has the blog site been visited by persons from throughout the nation, including Washington D.C., but it is not unusual to see visitors from Australia, Japan, Great Britain, and other countries as well. Some have sent back words of encouragement, giving their support to the movement against CO2 sequestration. This blog site can be located at http://citizensagainstco2sequestration.blogspot.com/

The more the group studies, the more they know that CO2 is definitely an experiment with risks. From the contamination of fertile crop land to the pollution of two major aquifers, from injection-induced earthquakes to the de-evaluation of homes and properties- -the risks threaten both livelihoods and lives while offering no compensation, no protection, and no guarantees against future liabilities.

Making these risks known to the public hasn’t been easy. Some of the members have spent long hours reading and studying both national and international scientific reports. Many of the members credit God for directing them, faith for sustaining them, and prayer for inspiring them to keep going. As Rita McCans said, “We turned our faith into action which has resulted in thousands of Darke County citizens coming together for the common good of all.”

Regardless of their political, religious or sociological backgrounds, these Darke County citizens are working together peaceably to achieve a common goal – the goal of stopping the CO2 sequestration project. As they work toward this goal, they are putting aside their differences to do what they think is best for not only their county but for the communities in which they live.

While they have accomplished much, they know if they are to accomplish more, they need still another “miracle” - - the “miracle” of a growing grassroots movement that can stand up to and stop a Federally-funded project, which they know can cause more problems that it can ever solve.

As thousands of citizens come together at Harmon field on August 12, they will by their presence be speaking with one voice to send a clear message to Washington D.C. that they oppose this project. More importantly, they will be putting into action the very foundation upon which the United States of America was founded, “In God We Trust.”

Anne Vehre, Co-Chair

Carbon Sequestration - Not likely

2009-08-11T00:10:00.004-04:00

Carbon Sequestration: Not Likely

by Peter Montague
This article comes from the disove

Back to the depths
Among the experimental carbon sequestration projects is in Texas, where liquid carbon would be injected into ancient super-salty water a mile underground.

How Carbon Capture Works

How Carbon Offsets Work

Top 10 Worst Effects of Global Warming

THE SCOOP: Big energy producers are looking at capturing carbon emissions from their fossil fuel burning and burying it deep underground. That way it stays out of the atmosphere and doesn't contribute to global warming. Here's what Peter Montague, executive director of Environmental Research Foundation, has to say about the idea. For a very different perspective, check out Discovery Tech [link here].

Whenever we burn fossil fuels (gasoline, natural gas, oil, or coal) we emit carbon dioxide (CO2) as a waste product. This waste CO2 contributes to two big problems:

(1) The earth is getting warmer, producing more and bigger storms, more floods, and worse droughts, thus disrupting food production and water supplies. This is serious.

(2) The oceans are growing more acid (CO2 plus water = carbonic acid). Many creatures at the base of the oceanic food chain live inside a thin, hard shell -- and carbonic acid attacks their shell, threatening the base of ocean life. This too is serious.

The ideal solution would be to stop making waste CO2 by phasing out fossil fuels and getting our energy from solar power in all its forms (direct sunlight, wind, and hydro dams). We know how to do this today but solar power remains somewhat more expensive then fossil fuels.
Solar has three big advantages -- (1) the sun shines everywhere so it provides "energy independence" for everyone; (2) using solar creates little or no CO2 wastes; and (3) the supply is endlessly renewable, so we won't run out. The sun doesn't shine at night but the wind blows at night and a "smart grid" with diverse power storage can keep the energy flowing everywhere 24/7. Today, the sun can provide the "base-load" power we need.

What prevents us from adopting renewable solar power is not the cost; it's the political muscle of the fossil fuel companies (oil and coal). Obviously they want us to keep burning fossil fuels because they're heavily invested.The people who run these companies aren't dumb -- they know CO2 is a big problem, so recently they devised an end-of-pipe solution: they propose to capture the CO2 and pressurize it until it turns into a liquid, then send it by pipeline to a suitable location and pump it a mile or so underground, hoping it will stay there forever. They call this "carbon capture and storage," or CCS for short.

What's wrong with this plan? In a nutshell:

1) The plan entails as many as 10,000 separate disposal sites in the U.S. alone. This would require creation of a hazardous-waste-CO2 disposal industry as big as the oil industry.

2) CCS itself would require lots of energy. For every four power plants, we would have to build a fifth power plant just to capture and store CO2. This would waste even more coal and oil.

3) Every engineer knows that avoiding waste is far better than managing waste. So CCS is fundamentally bad design.

4) Creating and running an enormous CO2 hazardous-waste disposal industry would roughly double the cost of fossil-fueled electricity. But this would make solar energy cost-competitive, so why not invest in renewable solar power now instead of investing in a dead-end CO2-waste disposal industry?

5) It would take decades to build this huge new CCS industry -- but we need solutions to the CO2 problem soon. Solar power plants can be built much faster than this experimental CCS plan could develop.

6) Instead of solving the CO2 problem that we've created, CCS would pass the problem along to our children and their children and their children's children. Basically buried CO2 could never be allowed to leak back out. We should take responsibility for our own problems, not pass them to our children to manage.

7) Scientists paid by the fossil fuel companies say the CO2 will never leak back out of the ground. What what if they're mistaken? Then our children will inherit a hot, acid-ocean, ruined world.

8) Sooner or later we're going to run out of fossil fuels -- all of them -- so eventually we have to adopt solar power. CCS just delays the inevitable -- a huge waste of time and money. We should skip CCS and go solar today.

Peter Montague, Ph.D., is the executive director of Environmental Research Foundation in New Brunswick, N.J. Since 1986 he has published Rachel's News weekly (www.rachel.org), providing information about environmental health issues to grass-roots community groups.

German Grassroots Opposition Movement with local political support

2009-08-10T22:40:00.002-04:00

To our allies in Germany fighting CO2 sequestration - we are cheering you on!

Click here to be taken to the story

"It was meant to be the world’s first demonstration of a technology that could help save the planet from global warming – a project intended to capture emissions from a coal-fired power station and bury them safely underground.

But the German carbon capture plan has ended with CO2 being pumped directly into the atmosphere, following local opposition at it being stored underground."

Goldman Sachs: "New Carbon Market Presents Major Opportunity"

2009-08-09T10:55:00.003-04:00

A recent Goldman Sachs report on the Waxman-Markey climate bill confirms it would result in one of the largest commodity markets in the world subject to significant speculation and have relatively marginal impacts on the renewable power industry.

A Goldman Sachs report on the Waxman-Markey climate bill, recently issued to Goldman Sachs' clients, confirms Breakthrough Institute analysis showing the legislation would result in one of the largest commodity markets in the world subject to significant speculation by financial firms, and would have relatively marginal impacts on the renewable power industry.

Titled "Carbonomics: Measuring impact of US carbon regulation on select industries" (not publicly accessible), the report concludes that "A new carbon market presents a major opportunity for exchanges and clearinghouses, especially as more allowances and offsets trade over time."

In a section titled "Carbon exchanges -- build it, and they will (must) come to trade," it estimates the bill would grow the global carbon market to become one of the largest in the world, with trading volume of 175 to 263 million contracts per year -- larger than the oil and gas markets combined and approximately the third largest commodity market in the world after U.S. interest rates and stock indexes. The analysts estimate the profit margin for financial firms resulting from this new carbon market could reach $2 billion per year globally.

Read the full story ............more

Pressure build-up during CO2 storage in partially confined aquifers

2009-08-09T08:13:00.005-04:00

YagnaDeepika Oruganti^a and Steven L. Bryant

"As the number or proximity of faults increases, the injectivity decreases slightly. In contrast to injectivity, contours of elevated pressures are sensitive to faults. They extend farther as the number or proximity of faults increases, increasing the area of influence and thus the risk of failure (seal fracture, fault activation) significantly. Thus well placement relative to known faults is an important design consideration. The effect of aquifer depth on pressure build-up due to injection is also investigated. The variation of fluid viscosity with pressure and temperature (brine viscosity is much more sensitive than CO₂ viscosity) is the dominant effect on injectivity and pressure build-up. An important overall message is that contours of elevated pressure extend much farther into the aquifer than the CO₂ plume itself. Thus risk assessment that focuses exclusively on CO₂ may underestimate actual project risk."

The link to this abstract is here

Strong Oppostion to CO2 storage project in Denmark

2009-08-09T01:29:00.004-04:00

A group of landowners in northern Jutland have collectively dug in their heels to stamp out a power company’s plans to establish a giant underground carbon dioxide storage chamber in Jammerbugten.

The power company has been promoting the argument that carbon dioxide is no more harmful than water and insists the resident have nothing to fear from the project. Vattenfall also points out that the European Union has indicated it wants 10-12 full-scale CCS projects at power plants across the continent within the next few years.
But even scientists at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland are at odds over the process.

Villy Fenhann, senior researcher at GEUS, is one of those who believes CCS diverts money from other, more viable climate solutions, such as renewable energy and energy efficiency.
‘We should be investing in the most environmentally friendly solutions and not in a method that is 50 percent more expensive,’ said Fenhann. ‘I wouldn’t feel safe with a CCS chamber in my backyard, either.’
Yet Fenhann’s colleague at GEUS, Thomas Vangkilde-Pedersen, said he didn’t see any danger with the project and that Jammerbugten was a perfect area to begin a new pilot.
But about 25 landowners in the area have now united under the banner ‘No to CO2 Storage Association’ to fight the project.

Vattenfall has offered Jammerbugten landowners 3,700 kroner each plus 1,000 kroner per hectare in compensation to get them ‘on side’ with the project. So far, 306 area residents have agreed to the project.
But according to the association of landowners opposed to the project, Vattenfall has also threatened to use the expropriation law to get around those who refused.

05/08-2009 Read more at The Copenhagen Post.

CO2 Sequestration R&D Overview - HIGH RISK

2009-08-08T18:11:00.008-04:00

The information on this page comes from this link

Fossil fuels will remain the mainstay of energy production well into the
21st century. Availability of these fuels to provide clean, affordable energy is
essential for the prosperity and security of the United States. However,
increased concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) due to carbon emissions are
expected unless energy systems reduce the carbon emissions to the atmosphere.

Roughly one third of the United States' carbon emissions come from power
plants and other large point sources. To stabilize and ultimately reduce
concentrations of this greenhouse gas, it will be necessary to employ carbon
sequestration - carbon capture, separation and storage or reuse.

MORE INFO
Program Overview: NETL's Carbon Sequestration
Program
Carbon Sequestration FAQ Information Portal

The
President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) underscored
the importance of carbon sequestration in its report "Federal Energy Research
and Development for the Challenges of the Twenty First Century." PCAST
recommended increasing the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) R&D for
carbon sequestration. The report stated: "A much larger science-based CO2
sequestration program should be developed. The aim should be to provide a
science-based assessment of the prospects and costs of CO2 sequestration. This is very high-risk, long-term R&D that will not be undertaken by industry alone without strong incentives or regulations, although industry experience and capabilities will be very useful." (quote color enhanced by RPR)

The joint Office of Fossil Energy and Office of Science April 1999
draft report Carbon Sequestration: State of the Science subsequently has
assessed "...key areas for research and development (R&D) that could lead to
an understanding of the potential for future use of carbon sequestration as a
major tool for managing carbon emissions."

To be successful, the techniques and practices to sequester carbon must meet the following requirements:

be effective and cost-competitive,
provide stable,
long term storage, and
be environmentally benign.

Using present technology, estimates of sequestration costs are in the range of $100 to $300/ton of carbon emissions avoided. The goal of the program is to reduce the
cost of carbon sequestration to $10 or less per net ton of carbon emissions
avoided by 2015. Achieving this goal would save the U.S. trillions of dollars.

Further, achieving a mid-point stabilization scenario (e.g., 550 parts
per million CO2) would not require wholesale introduction of zero emission
systems in the near term. This would allow time to develop cost effective
technology over the next 10-15 years that could be deployed for new capacity and
capital stock replacement capacity.

Modeling and assessments provide the capabilities to evaluate technology options in a total systems context (i.e., considering costs and impacts over the full product cycle). Further, the societal and environmental effects are analyzed to provide a basis for assessing trade-offs between local environmental impacts and global impacts.

Stop Experimental CO2 Projects

2009-08-08T07:42:00.005-04:00

7 Ways to Get Involved –

1) Do your research and then talk to your family, friends and co-workers

2) ATTEND OUR LARGE EVENTS OR JOIN THE COMMITTEE
Next large event -
Wed. Aug 12

"Faith into Action"
7 PM

Rain or Shine

Greenville High School Football Field, Greenville, OH

3) Write letters to the editor

4) Write letters to elected officials

Track how your elected officials vote – you voted them in and you can vote them OUT!

Get Your Representatives' Votes sent to you by email weekly. Click here
Congress.org Newsletter -Get the Congress.org spotlight news sent to you by email weekly. Click here

5) Join Citizens Against CO2 Sequestration

Get a YARD SIGN (We already have 800 up with more on the way!)

Call Isabelle or pick one up at Tropical Isle Tanning Salon.

6) DONATE- Greenville Federal Bank, Greenville, OH - All contributions are appreciated!

7) Invite a member of Citizens Against CO2 Sequestration to speak at your next group gathering

We are a grassroots movement - public outreach and meetings have a cost involved with them. Our passion is deep but our pockets are not. All donations are appreciated.

For more information email - StopExperimentalCO2Projects@yahoo.com

Decatur, IL - Large Scale CO2 Sequestration Project

2009-08-07T08:00:00.000-04:00

This is a link to a PowerPoint presentation about another Phase III, large-scale CO2 project - shades of what it would look like in Greenville, OH. Click here

Community Acceptance of Carbon Capture and Sequestration Infrastructure: Siting Challenges

2009-08-07T00:26:00.005-04:00

CRS Report for Congress - Write your elected officials on EVERY level and tell them you oppose Carbon Capture and Sequestration!

Greenville (Darke County) Ohio OPPOSES Carbon Capture and Sequestration Projects!

800 OPPOSITION YARD SIGNS UP - More on the WAY
( 400 in the last month!)

CRS Report for Congress
http://assets.opencrs.com/rpts/RL34601_20080729.pdf

Carbon market - A TRILLION dollars A Year?!

2009-08-05T07:23:00.004-04:00

http://www.correntewire.com/great_american_bubble_machine_0

Goldman Sachs..... scroll down to #6

AS ENVISIONED BY GOLDMAN, THE FIGHT TO STOP GLOBAL WARMING WILL BECOME A "CARBON MARKET" WORTH $1 TRILLION A YEAR.

County Commissioners support Citizens and ask Andersons Marathon Ethanol to halt CO2 Sequestration project!

2009-08-04T01:00:00.000-04:00

Resolution (R-200-09)

Statement from the Board of Darke County Commissioners regarding the CO2 sequestration project

WHEREAS, the Darke County Commission Board has found the Anderson Inc. to be a very professional and upstanding company; and

WHEREAS, the operations at The Anderson Marathon Ethanol (TAME) Plant in the Greenville Industrial Park has provided a great benefit to our area farmers as well as to the overall community; and

WHEREAS, the Darke County Commission Board realizes the importance and value of scientific research and that Battelle Company is one of the premiere research groups in the country, if not in the world, and we have found their representatives to be very informative and professional with their scientific research addressing global climate changes and in producing clean affordable energy; and

WHEREAS, the Darke County Commission Board realizes that they can not legally stop the CO2 testing. However, due to the overwhelming opposition of the majority of our Darke County residents and the unknown risk factors of the CO2 testing compiled, with no known benefit, no guarantees of compensation and no knowledge of financial, business or growth opportunities for the County; and

WHEREAS, the Board of Darke County Commissioners are stating that they are in opposition of this scientific CO2 Sequestration Project and are asking the Anderson Marathon Ethanol Plant to honor our request to halt this project; and

WHEREAS, the Darke County Commissioners are joining in the ranks of our citizenry that they are in opposition of the CO2 project due to the unknown risks and the potential harm to Darke County; and

WE THEREFORE RESOLVE by motion to approve the signing of this Resolution; moved by Commissioner ______; seconded by Commissioner ___________________; and the Clerk called for a roll call vote as follows:

Michael W. Rhoades (YEA), Terry Haworth (YEA), and Diane Delaplane (YEA) Darke County Board of Commissioners.

2002 - Search for CO2 sequestration sites begins

2009-08-03T00:01:00.003-04:00

November 21, 2002

A Climate Change Solution
Beneath Our Feet?
Energy Department Joins AEP, Battelle to Study Deep Geologic Reservoirs for Greenhouse Gas Storage

New Haven, WV - Deep beneath much of the United States lie rock formations containing waters far too salty for human consumption. Long overlooked, these brine-filled reservoirs are now attracting new interest as possible "storage sites" for greenhouse gases emitted from power plants.


	Deep saline formations underlie much of the United States including many areas where power plants are concentrated. [Click on map for larger image.]

The U.S. Department of Energy has given the go-ahead to a research team headed by American Electric Power (AEP) and Battelle to begin studying potential sites in the Ohio River Valley where carbon dioxide – a greenhouse gas emitted when coal and other fuels are burned – might one day be injected deep underground where it would remain safely and permanently trapped.

AEP has volunteered its Mountaineer Plant in New Haven, WV, along the Ohio-West Virginia border as the test site for investigating the concept.


	Read AEP's and Battelle's joint announcement on this project

If the approach proves feasible, it could offer a way for many electric and industrial plants to reduce emissions believed to contribute to global climate change. The AEP/Battelle project will be especially important because it will take place in the heart of the largest concentration of fossil fuel power plants in the nation.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced the new "carbon sequestration" effort at a speech today before the National Coal Council, an advisory panel to the Department of Energy.

"Our goal is to develop a suite of carbon management options that we know are safe, affordable, and effective. We want to have these options ready should the science tell us that large-scale carbon reductions are necessary in the future," Abraham said.

Abraham said that if carbon sequestration – the capture and permanent storage of carbon gases – proves practical, it could help mitigate environmental concerns regarding the use of coal. Coal supplies more than half of the nation's electricity and is one of the reasons why Americans benefit from some of the lowest cost electricity in the world.

Theoretically, deep saline reservoirs, which underlie all or part of 35 states, could hold all of the carbon dioxide emitted from the nation's coal-burning power plants over the next 100 years.

Beneath the Ohio-West Virginia border lies the massive Mt. Simon Sandstone saline formation. Ranging from 3,000 to 12,000 feet deep, this huge formation extends as far as Illinois and Wisconsin. Several other potential host reservoirs for carbon dioxide storage are also in the area.

The project's current phase is expected to last 18 months. During this time, researchers will conduct a seismic survey within a 5- to 10-mile radius of the Mountaineer Plant to study the characteristics of the underground rock formations. Early next year, a 10,000-foot well will be drilled on the plant property to study the target area and overlying sediment layers in detail.

Data will be used for simulations, risk assessments, permit applications, and to design the monitoring plans for future stages of the effort if the site proves geologically sound. No decision will be made on proceeding beyond the current study phase until the subsurface geology is deemed suitable for permanently entrapping large quantities of carbon dioxide and cost estimates are developed.

Using deep saline reservoirs for carbon dioxide storage is attractive not only because the reservoirs are common but because they are well below drinking water aquifers. In the Ohio River Valley, drinking water is typically produced from formations only 10 to 200 feet below ground, compared to the 3,000- to 12,000-foot depths of the saline formations.

Geologists believe the distance between fresh water and possible injection zones is so great and the intervening rock layers so impervious to the upward movement of carbon dioxide that the approach will pose no hazard to drinking water. Indeed, a major question the AEP/Battelle project hopes to answer is whether rocks above possible "storage" areas are sturdy enough and sufficiently free of interconnected fractures to assure that the carbon dioxide cannot gradually escape.

The Department, through its National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), is providing $3.2 million of the project's total $4.2 million cost. Other partners providing financial and in-kind support include AEP, BP, Battelle, and Schlumberger. The Ohio Coal Development Office, part of Ohio's Department of Development, is also supporting the project. Results will lead to significant improvements in understanding the geology of potential carbon dioxide injection zones in southeastern Ohio. Should coal-based power plants be required to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the future, the deep injection concept could play a major role in preserving jobs that these plants and Ohio coal mines support.

RISKS - What They DON'T Want You To Know!

2009-08-02T13:34:00.002-04:00

Do you have a CCS Project targeted for your community?

Do your research!

Many companies pushing this "technology" have done, or participated in, studies to determine how to gain public acceptance and trust. Some of the information include statements referencing when and if to tell the public.... (some suggesting you should tell when VISIBLE)

Other companies and consultants do risk analysis.....

Development of Risk Log -

16 experts and stakeholders rank priority and cost for each event and damage - with the results tabulated and assessed"

GENERAL TYPES OF DAMAGES

Harm to Workers
Harm to the Public
Environmental Damages
Cautionary Events
Property Damage
Project Delays/Cost Overruns

To see a PowerPoint that addresses this issue, click here

Note Page 15 on the above PowerPoint - "Short term, the potential for low probability/high cost events is problematic because it is not zero"

Carbon sequestration frustration Burying carbon dioxide from coal-fired plants could increase other pollutants

2009-08-02T13:28:00.003-04:00

To read the entire article from Science News please click here.....

Another reason why CCS does not make sense.......... it exists to keep Big Coal burning.

By Patrick Barry

Web edition : Wednesday, August 13th, 2008

Text Size

As pollution bad guys go, carbon dioxide may be the media darling, but trying to capture it and lock it away could allow other repeat offenders to go free.

Power plant emissions that cause acid rain, water pollution and destruction of the ozone layer may actually be made worse by capturing the CO₂ and pumping it deep underground, a new study reported online and in an upcoming International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control suggests.

This increase of other emissions is largely because collecting and burying CO₂ — a process called carbon sequestration — requires additional energy, new equipment and new chemical reactions at the plants. And using current technology, meeting all of these requirements releases extra pollutants.

“Other studies mostly just look at one aspect, the carbon capture,” says study coauthor Joris Koornneef, an environmental scientist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. “This is a first step in trying to quantify the [environmental] trade-offs.”

Captured CO₂ must be compressed to about 100 times atmospheric pressure (which takes energy), transported to a suitable underground reservoir (which takes energy) and pumped into the ground (which takes energy). A coal-fired power plant that sequesters its CO₂ must burn about 30 percent more coal than conventional plants to cover these energy needs. And that extra coal must first be mined (which has environmental effects) and transported to the plant (which takes fuel) — the list goes on and on.

Even with this extra burden, a CO₂-burying plant emits between 71 and 78 percent less CO₂ than a normal coal-fired plant for each unit of usable electricity produced, Koornneef and his colleagues report. But when the researchers factored in all the “cradle to grave” pollution of a CO₂-burying plant, emissions of acid rain-causing gases like nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides were up to 40 percent greater than the total cradle-to-grave emissions of a modern plant that doesn’t capture its CO₂. Continue

How long has Darke County (Greenville), OH been on the MRCSP radar?

2009-08-02T05:10:00.001-04:00

FACT SHEET FOR PARTNERSHIP FIELD
VALIDATION TEST
Midwest Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership
(MRCSP)
NETL Cooperative Agreement DE-FC26-05NT42589

Submitted by Battelle
November 2007

Apparently, much longer than we were aware of...... this report mentions a geological study being done in 2002 and many more "interesting" facts about the Battelle-led MRCSP Phase III large-scale project, including some of these:

Test Location Primary Site:
The Andersons Marathon Ethanol (TAME) Plant, Greenville,Ohio.

Optional Site:
Duke IGCC plant, Edwardsport, Indiana

"CO2 storage simulations have been carried out in earlier research by members of the MRCSP
team for the Mt. Simon in west-central Ohio near the TAME Ethanol site (Gupta et al 2002).
While these early models were not in the exact same location as the proposed projects, the
results are similar to what may be expected for these general areas. Key input parameters in the
simulations were based on best available regional data, and the parameters are not site specific,
but they are fairly reasonable for the Mt. Simon in the respective area. These initial models indicate that injection rates of over 1 million tons of CO2 per year may be sustained in the Mt. Simon at the TAME site."

"Emissions from large point sources in the MRCSP region are approximately 765 million metric tons CO2"

"Continues to develop and establish a CCS framework in the region with ongoing geologic framework, regional carbon sequestration exploration, and outreach efforts. "

http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/proceedings/07/rcsp/factsheets/5-MRCSP_Large%20Scale%20CO2%20Storage%20in%20Mt.%20Simon%20Reservoir.pdf

Workshop Summary - Long Term Liability Potentially Associated with Carbon Capture and Sequestration

2009-08-02T00:23:00.007-04:00

The excerpts below are from the following web site and the entire article can be found there. Click here to go to live link -

Workshop Summary

Long Term Liability Potentially Associated
with Carbon Capture and Sequestration

1 November 2007

Review of Priority Ranking of Risks - done so they can step back and look at CCS projects with an investors eye..... to make sure they will fund the projects.

Click here to go to the WRI site

--

Storing carbon underground can have unintended consequences

2009-08-01T22:37:00.005-04:00

From Greenpeace - "FALSE HOPE

One of the key challenges for CCS is the safe and permanent storage of captured carbon. Even very small leakage rates could completely undermine any climate mitigation efforts.

The world has no experience of the long-term storage of anything, let alone CO2.
As the results of a 2006 United States Geological Survey (USGS) field experiment1 show, there is every chance that carbon dioxide will behave in ways that are totally
unexpected. The USGS scientists were testing deep geological disposal of carbon dioxide at a pilot project in Frio, Texas.

The researchers were surprised when the buried CO2 dissolved large amounts of the surrounding minerals responsible for keeping it contained. The CO2 reacted with salty water (brine) in the geological formation turning it as acidic as vinegar. This acidified brine then dissolved other minerals, including metals such as iron and manganese, organic material and relatively large amounts of carbonate materials. Carbonates naturally seal pores and fractures in geological sites; the reaction of the acidic brine with them is extremely concerning. Carbonate is also found in the cements used to plug abandoned oil and gas wells. If these open, CO2 could leak into the atmosphere and/or the contaminated brine could leak into the aquifers that supply drinking and irrigation water.

In an interview with Greenpeace, lead scientist Yousif Kharaka warned that the results are “a cautionary note: for detailed and careful studies of injection sites, and a well thought out monitoring program to detect early study show that we simply do not know enough about how stored carbon will behave to be able to assure its safe and permanent storage.

1 Kharaka Y K, Cole D R, Hovorka S D, Gunter W D, Knauss K G & Freifeld B M, ‘Gas-water-rock interactions in frio formation following CO2 injection:
Implications for the storage of greenhouse gases in sedimentary basins’, Geology, vol., 34, no. 7, 2006, pp. 577–580.
2 Kharka, Yousif, 2007, USGS, Research Hydrologist, Interview conducted over e-mail.

Ohio Earthquakes - Two point of views

2009-08-01T19:00:00.010-04:00

Battelle has a report about Injection- Induced Earthquakes
ISSUES RELATED TO SEISMIC ACTIVITY INDUCED BY THE INJECTION OF CO2 IN DEEP SALINE AQUIFERS - it says the Anna fault earthquakes happen at 10 kilometers or deeper - this link also talks about the effect of supercritical CO2 on geology

This next link to the OhioSeis site (The Ohio Seismic Network ) - it says earthquakes in Ohio happen at a depth of 3 - 6 miles ...... which is much closer to the depth of the proposed injection well for our area.

http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/Portals/10/pdf/EL/el09.pdf

Both of these articles are worth reading

Injection Induced Earthquakes - NE Ohio

2009-08-01T18:36:00.004-04:00

Camp, Mark J.; Roadside Geology of Ohio; Mountain Press, Missoula, Montana, 2006 , 411 pp.

Northeast Ohio Earthquakes page 315

A Jesuit priest, Reverend Frederick L. Odenbach, set up the first seismograph in Ohio in Cleveland in 1900. It was one of the first in the United States. Ohio was not a center of earthquake activity, but seven weak to mild shocks had struck Ashtabula, Cuyahoga, Lake Portage, and Summit Counties in the 1800’s. Father Odenbach’s pioneering work allowed researchers to record about a dozen moderate quakes during the 1900’s. The most notable quake in the area, however, occurred much later, on January 31, 1986, southeast of Painesville. It registered about 5 on the Richter scale. Two people suffered minor injuries; items fell off store shelves in Chardon, Mentor, and Painesville; windows and plaster walls cracked; and area well water reportedly changed color and taste. Portable seismographs placed around the area the day after the main quake recorded at least thirteen aftershocks as high as 2.4 Richter magnitude. The great interest in this quake was probably related to the fact that a nuclear power plant operates in nearby Perry.

Small faults are common in Devonian-age rocks in northeastern Ohio. Other, more ancient ones lie more than a mile below the surface in Precambrian rocks. All these faults experience periodic adjustments, caused by the release of stress or pressure in the subsurface, which are recorded as earthquakes at the surface.

On January 25, 2001, a quake registering 4.6 magnitude rattled the Ashtabula area. This was only one of dozens that had shaken the area since 1987. Injection of waste fluids down a 6,000-foot-deep well into the Cambrian Mt.Simon sandstone from 1987 to 1993 has been linked to this seismic activity. The injected fluids seep along cracks in the sandstone, leading to slips along faults. The faults have been there for hundreds of millions of years and have just come to life in recent years because of artificial lubrication.

Mark J. Camp has a PhD in geology from The Ohio State University.

Bold italics by Jane Staley

NETL Report - April 2009 MRSCP TAME Project - Greenville, OH

2009-08-01T17:45:00.000-04:00

http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/factsheets/project/Proj599.pdf

NATCARB Project

2009-08-01T16:59:00.006-04:00

This site is very well done.......

"The National Carbon Sequestration Database and Geographical Information System (NATCARB) started as a joint project among the State Geological Surveys of five midwestern states (Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, and Ohio). The project was later expanded to include the seven Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnerships and a prototype to integrate databases for terrestrial carbon sequestration with databases on geologic sequestration.

The purpose of NATCARB is to assess the carbon sequestration potential in the United States and to develop a national Carbon Sequestration Geographic Information System (GIS) and relational database covering the United States and parts of Canada. This digital spatial database allows users to estimate the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted by sources (such as power plants, refineries and other fossil fuel consuming industries) in relation to geologic formations that can provide safe, secure sequestration sites over long periods.
Objectives

The objectives of this project are to:
• Develop a national carbon sequestration geographic information and relational database management system covering the U.S. and operating through a portal maintained by the National Energy Technology Laboratory website.
• Develop online tools to provide real-time display and analysis of CO2
sequestration data.

Accomplishments

The NATCARB map server is active and currently running on the internet, and can be utilized by accessing the following web address: http://www.natcarb.org. Reliable communication among the various servers has been established, and tools have been developed to query, display, and analyze CO2 source, sink, and transportation data.
Tools allow clients to query and plot emissions or production through time for a single source or a combination of sources across a region. Tools are also available
to determine the solubility or physical properties of CO2 under various conditions.
Not only is the NATCARB server connected to all seven Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnerships but data on states not included in any of the Partnerships has been entered into the database. To provide national coverage, data in real- time is being pulled from public servers including the U.S. Geological Survey’s Center for Earth Resources Observation & Science (USGS-EROS) and from the Geography Network. Major CO2 sources have been obtained from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency databases, and data on major coal basins and coalbed methane wells was obtained from the U. S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Agency. Though it is available through the NATCARB site, the databases are stored and managed by the Regional Partnerships.
Plans

NATCARB intends to generate high quality national sale maps and begin development of a new version of the Carbon Sequestration Atlas of the United States and Canada."

PARTNERS
University of Kansas
West Virginia University
Kansas State University
The state geological surveys in:
Illinois, Indiana, Kansas Kentucky, and Ohio
The DOE Regional CO2 Partnerships

Cost Total Project Value
$5,934,736
DOE/Non-DOE Share
$4,548,688 / $1,386,048

http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/factsheets/project/Proj305.pdf

Department of Energy and NETL Web Sites

2009-08-01T16:53:00.003-04:00

DOE and NETL web sites, and those of their seven Carbon Sequestration Regional Partnerships, have a wealth of information on all aspects of CCS. These sites can be accessed directly or through http://www.energy.gov and http://www.NETL.gov. NETL’s Sequestration Roadmap can be found on http://www.netl.doe.gov/technologies/carbon_seq/refshelf/project%20portfolio/2007/2007Roadmap.pdf
DOE/NETL’s National Carbon Sequestration Database and Geographical Information System (NatCarb) is especially valuable and can be accessed through http://www.natcarb.org. The seven Carbon Sequestration Regional Partnerships web sites can be accessed directly:
 Big Sky Partnership (Big Sky) at http://www.bigskyco2.org
 Midwest Geological Sequestration Consortium (MGSC) at http://www.sequestration.org
 Midwest Regional Partnership (MRCSP) at http://www.mrscp.org
 Plains Partnership (PCOR) at http://www.undeerc.org/pcor/
 South East Partnership (SECARB) at http://www.secarbon.org
 South West Partnership (SWP) at http://www.southwestcarbonpartnership.org
 West Coast Partnership (WESTCARB) at http://www.westcarb.org
USCSC educational papers on CCS can be accessed at http://www.uscsc.org

House Hearing On Carbon Sequestration & Drinking Water Protection

2009-07-31T21:26:00.002-04:00

Click here to be taken to this article

July 2008

Jul 24: The House Energy & Commerce Committee, Subcommittee on Environment and Hazardous Materials, Chaired by Representative Gene Green (D-TX), held a hearing entitled, Carbon Sequestration: Risks, Opportunities, and Protection of Drinking Water. Witnesses testifying at the hearing included Benjamin Grumbles, Assistant Administrator Office of Water for U.S. EPA, and representatives from: Energy Resources Team U.S. Geological Survey National Center; Strategic Center for Coal of U.S. Department of Energy (DOE); Oil and Gas Commission; American Water Works Association (AWWA); Bureau of Economic Geology, University of Texas at Austin; Environmental Defense Fund (EDF); and the Coal Utilization Research Council.

In opening remarks, full Committee Chairman John Dingell (D-MI) said, "Water is critical to growth and economic development in many areas of the country, and will become even more so in future years. In pursuing the goal of carbon capture and storage, a system must be in place that protects the quality of drinking water sources and assures the public that this is a safe way to proceed. Approximately one week ago EPA released proposed regulations under the Safe Drinking Water Act designed to achieve these goals [See WIMS 7/15/08]. I look forward to EPA’s testimony and the views of our other witnesses on the adequacy of the proposed regulations and any gaps that remain to be addressed.

EPA testified that geologic sequestration associated with Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is a promising technology that provides an innovative solution for reducing emissions of (CO2) to the atmosphere, while safeguarding our country’s underground sources of drinking water. EPA said the UIC program is focused on protecting public health by preventing injection wells from contaminating underground sources of drinking water. EPA’s proposed regulations build on more than 35 years of experience in the UIC program of safely injecting fluids, either liquid, gas or slurry, including CO2, into the subsurface. Annually, billions of gallons of fluids are injected underground through wells authorized under State and Federal UIC Programs. This includes approximately 35 million tons of carbon dioxide that are injected for the purposes of enhancing oil and gas recovery.

The buoyancy of CO2, its potential corrosivity when in water, the potential presence of impurities in captured CO2, its mobility within subsurface formations, and the large injection volumes anticipated at full scale deployment, have all been considered in requirements tailored to the new practice of injecting CO2 for long-term storage. EPA’s proposal would create a new well type -- a Class VI UIC well. EPA said, "We believe we have developed a framework that will ensure safe injection in the present and safe storage in the future."

USGS testified that Section 711 of the Energy Independence and Security Act (P.L. 110-140), enacted into law in December 2007, authorized the Secretary of the Interior, acting through the Director of the USGS, to develop an assessment methodology and conduct a national assessment of geological storage capacity in collaboration with the Secretary of Energy, the Administrator of EPA, and the State geological surveys. USGS will collaborate with DOE to incorporate the results of the assessment into future revisions of the DOE “Carbon Sequestration Atlas of the United States and Canada”. The cumulative advances from these earlier USGS studies and DOE-funded activities provide a basis for developing a methodology to assess the national capacity to store CO2 and understand the potential impacts of large-scale deployment of geologic sequestration.

DOE testified that the 2006 Carbon Sequestration Atlas contains information on major CO2 emission point sources, geologic formations with sequestration potential, and some terrestrial ecosystems that offer the potential for enhanced carbon uptake – all referenced to their geographic location to enable analysis of CO2 sources and storage sites. An interactive version of the Atlas is publicly available through the National Carbon Explorer (NATCARB) website [See below]. DOE is funding a network of seven Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnerships to help develop technology, infrastructure, and best practices/protocols for implementing CO2 sequestration in different geologies of the Nation. This approach includes engaging local organizations and citizens to contribute expertise, experience, and perspectives that represent their concerns and goals.

AWWA testified, "Our overarching concern regarding geologic carbon sequestration is the potential contamination of underground sources of drinking water (USDW) from such activities and the potential for other unintended, and possibly harmful, consequences. AWWA is particularly concerned about the potential for contamination of sole source aquifers and suggests that these aquifers be provided with special protective measures. An aquifer receives the designation of “sole source aquifer” if it is located in an area where there are few or no alternative sources to the ground water resource, and where if contamination occurred, using an alternative source would be extremely expensive. AWWA urges caution on the implementation of large-scale, commercial geologic carbon sequestration, as little data are available regarding the potential effects of this technology on drinking water resources. . . AWWA recommends that commercial-scale carbon sequestration not be deployed until the results of the large-scale Department of Energy pilot projects have been received and reviewed. . . "

AWWA also draws attention to the significant issue of long-term liability resolved. EPA’s proposed geologic carbon sequestration rule cannot address financial responsibility of the sequestration site after the formal period of post-injection site care has ended (default of 50 year length). AWWA says Congress must develop legislation that will address the issue of who has to assume financial responsibility of the sequestration site after the site closure requirements have been fulfilled and anticipates a means by which drinking water utilities could recover any costs incurred as a result contamination.

Public Interest Groups Oppose Carbon Capture Scam

2009-07-29T07:16:00.010-04:00

Unproven technology, Ridiculous Risk, Exorbitant Cost
Oppose industry-driven plans for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) to keep COAL burning. Read this article

The time to stop these projects is BEFORE COAL, and its friends, enter your community!

It's time to find alternatives - every dime spent on CCS is a dime spent on COAL and NOT Renewable Energy. Not only does CCS keep the coal industry going, it requires up to 40% MORE ENERGY - MORE COAL !

Citizens Against CO2 Sequestration has taken a stand in our community to oppose Carbon Capture and Sequestration.

Our Community is opposing one of the 7 DOE large-scale CO2 sequestration demonstrations (experiments) targeted for our community - the MRCSP Phase III project. This grassroots movement of concerned citizens understands the risks and finds them unacceptable for our community - and yours.

700+ Opposition Yard Signs are up - with more on the way!

Darke County is an agriculturally strong community, ranking #1 and #2 in most areas. Our Farmers' Union has taken a stand to oppose CCS! (Thank you Darke County farmers!)

Protect health, safety and environment - Take A Stand AGAINST CCS

Fighting a CCS (Carbon Capture and Sequestration) project in your community?
Contact us.

StopExperimentalCO2Projects@yahoo.com

DO MORE
Click Here to Access the Sierra Club Web Site

To Sign the Petition and Add Your Name to Oppose Coal

America needs more clean energy jobs and less pollution--and President Obama's EPA already has the power to act. Sign their petition to your Senators asking them to urge President Obama to create rules that regulate coal ash, mercury, soot and carbon pollution.

Evaluating Geological CO2 Sequestion Sites (Permanent Storage)

2009-07-29T05:50:00.006-04:00

"This report describes a screening and ranking framework (SRF) developed to evaluate
potential geologic carbon dioxide (CO2) storage sites on the basis of health, safety, and environmental (HSE) risk arising from possible CO2 leakage. The approach assumes that HSE risk due to CO2 leakage is dependent on three basic characteristics of a geologic CO2 storage site: (1) the potential for primary containment by the target formation, (2) the potential for secondary containment if the primary formation leaks, and (3) the potential for attenuation and dispersion of leaking CO2 if the primary formation leaks and secondary containment fails. The framework is implemented in a spreadsheet in which users enter numerical scores representing expert opinions or general information available from published materials, along with estimates of uncertainty to evaluate the three basic characteristics in order to screen and rank candidate sites. Application of the framework to the Rio Visa Gas Field, Ventura Oil Field, and Mammoth Mountain demonstrates the approach."

The full report can be accessed here

CO2 Sequestration - Does NOT work

2009-07-29T01:37:00.004-04:00

Ike Solem says:

February 14, 2009 at 4:13 pm

Read the full story here

The reality is not quite as rosy as it looks. This same issue arose in 2007, when the nuclear industry tried to force $50 billion in loan guarantees through. Historically, nuclear and coal and oil have received giant federal subsidies in the form of loan guarantees, tax breaks, and direct subsidies via zero-oversight federal contracting deals. Despite popular pressure to roll back these subsidies and promises by politicians to do so, they largely remain intact – only gross expansions of these subsidies have been defeated – and according to reports, the $2 billion for the FutureGen “clean coal” project remains in the bill.

That’s $2 billion for one generation plant using an apparently failed technology. (The U.S. federal budget for ALL solar photovoltaic research is about 1/20th of that, $100 million) The technology is secret and proprietary and is controlled by a financial consortium of private coal interests (i.e. Southern, Peabody, BHPBilliton, etc.) and military government contractors (Battelle, the primary organizer). There are no published papers on the technology, which they refuse to talk about because it is proprietary. Try asking the technical advisers about it:

http://www.futuregenalliance.org/alliance/advisors.stm

Battelle is the world’s largest private research corporation, who manages five National Labs for the Department of Energy and plays the leading role in the U.S. biological warfare program, as well as in many other areas of military and commercial R&D. They are the proprietary controllers of FutureGen technology, and they’ve never published anything on it either. Despite the public financing of the project, Battelle insists that only “non-proprietary performance data” can be released, whatever that means. Fraud is the most likely story here.

The fact of the matter is that carbon sequestration-based coal combustion does not work, and will never work, on simple physical arguments. There’s also no prototype – for example, a car that drives down the road while capturing all CO2 emissions in the trunk. Try sticking a potato in the tailpipe – that’s what all CO2 sequestration involves – massive power losses. It’s likely that if you could design a coal plant that captured 90% of its CO2 emissions, it would only produce 10% of the power (per ton of coal) that a dirty modern coal plant does. There’s no way around it, especially if the coal is loaded up with sulfur and mercury and arsenic, as is typical.

What we don’t see is $2 billion to build an integrated wind-solar power system with backup biomass generations in some city as a test case. They are doing this in Germany – but not here. The reason for that is that the Democratic politicians from the coal states are dedicated supporters of the coal industry, and yes, that does include Obama and Dick Durbin, as well as Jeff Bingaman.

The last thing the coal industry wants to see is a city anywhere in the U.S. that operates entirely on renewable power – but it can be done, and it would be the perfect example. $2 billion would be a good initial investment – but there would be howls from the fossil fuel industry, that’s for sure – and they own Congress, more or less. You don’t see oil executives and coal executives being hauled before Congress the way the auto and finance executives were, do you? And no one is asking financiers why they are investing their bailout money in fossil fuels and not in renewables, either. (Bloomberg reported that Morgan Stanley and Citigroup were buying oil up and storing it in supertankers – a way to drive up the price, or to reserve oil for when prices rise – and these banks are also invested in fossil fuels, thanks to the repeal of Glass-Steagall banking rules c.1999 – and that’s why those rules were put in place – banks should not be able to loan their customer’s money to firms that they hold shares in, period).

I would put the celebrations on hold – this stimulus package is the equivalent of a band aid on a shark bite. There’s a whole lot of work to be done still, and the issues are very complicated. This was not a defeat for coal interests – they lost nothing, and even gained a little something. It would be a lot easier if the press would honestly cover this story, but they haven’t.

German Grassroots Opposition Movement with local political support

2009-07-27T01:26:00.004-04:00

Many citizens, on the other hand, are worried about the effects of the project. "If a CO2 storage site is built here, the tourists will stay away," says Werner Asmus. He is the unsalaried mayor of the community of Wallsbüll and the spokesman for a citizens' initiative that already claims to have recruited 2,500 supporters. Local politicians are calling it a "real grassroots movement." In addition to Green Party members, conservative Christian Democratic mayors of local towns are calling upon their citizens to refuse to allow the employees of electric utilities to set foot on their property. In the Weser River region, entire counties have blocked RWE's exploration activities.

Many fear that the storage sites will not be leak-proof. Besides, they are seen as a green fig leaf, the sole purpose of which is to extend the operating life of coal-fired power plants, thereby delaying the development of renewable energy sources.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,632620,00.html

Midwest feasibility study for possible long-term CO2 pipeline

2009-07-26T18:13:00.003-04:00

Denbury has initiated a comprehensive feasibility study of a possible long-term CO2 pipeline project which would connect proposed gasification plants in the Midwest to the Company’s existing CO2 pipeline infrastructure in Mississippi or Louisiana. The Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity has provided financial assistance for the feasibility study for the Illinois portion of the pipeline. The feasibility study is expected to determine the most likely pipeline route, the estimated costs of constructing such a pipeline, and review regulatory, legal and permitting requirements. It is estimated that the study will be completed in the fourth quarter of 2009, following which, the Company will evaluate external market conditions, the state of financing and construction of the proposed gasification projects, and make a decision as to whether or not they will take initial steps to build such a pipeline.

Read the rest of the story here

Citizens Against CO2 Sequestration - Parade

2009-07-26T00:41:00.004-04:00

We were invited to ride on Doug Harmon's Coldwell Banker float - and we never miss the opportunity to show up in our hot yellow-green shirts and promote our cause - STOPPING CO2 Sequestration in Darke County - while some of our crew sold yard signs, Tshirt, buttons and window clings!

Photo by Jason Aslinger (www.darkejournal.com)

CO2 Sequestration Poll for Darke County on DarkeJournal.com

2009-07-26T00:07:00.017-04:00

Thank you, Darke Journal for conducting this poll - and many thanks to our residents who voted in the poll against the proposed CO2 sequestration project in Greenville, Ohio.

www.darkejournal.com

As you will recall, The Daily Advocate, did a poll prior to our Call to Action Meeting the end of June.... results below

Click here to be taken to the poll

PLEASE NOTE: This poll was conducted prior to the past month’s concerted effort to educate and inform the public regarding the proposed sequestration.

***

Published July 1, 2009

Recently, The Daily Advocate sent out a Reader’s Poll to online newsletter subscribers about the proposed carbon sequestration project in Greenville. The poll consisted of 10 questions based on concerns the newspaper was receiving from local residents.

The poll was sent out to 2,268 subscribers and received 161 responses.

Of the 161 responses, 73 percent felt that there should be a public vote on the proposed project.

“How do we stop this project? The people of the county should decide what happens,” wrote on respondent.

“A public vote is the best way to go. Why? Because the co2 sequestration affects all our properties, all our jobs, and all of our community not just a select few government leaders who ‘should’ be representing the county,” wrote another.

“This project should be voted on by the public.We the public and our children will be the ones who will have to live with the after effects for years and years to come,” said another.

Many others (40 percent) felt that the project needed local government approval to move forward.

Concerns were other big issues. Fifty-nine percent said that local farmers should be concerned about the impact of the project.

And, 36 percent said that the project would impact their property’s value. Fifty percent said that the project was dangerous.

“I do not feel this project is in the best interest of OUR community! It’s an experiment with too many risk factors, especially when it’s messing with our fresh water supply,” states one individual.

“This is a threat to our lifestyle and our community and me and my family are strongly opposed to anything to do with this project. Battelle can take this project back to the city with them,” another person strongly stated.

The majority did not feel that the project was a good idea for the community (59 percent) or that it would make our community more ‘green’ (50 percent).

Respondents strongly agreed that they needed more information about the project (55 percent) and that Battelle, the company proposing the project, did not seem very committed to the well being of the

community (44 percent). Thirty-eight percent of respondents said that the project should provide a reward to the community for taking the risk.

Read more comments from the respondents on the Web site at

http://www.advocate360.org

CCS Guidelines from WRI

2009-07-25T18:38:00.005-04:00

These excerpts come from this link

Principles for Meaningful Community Engagement
(1) Identify stakeholders early. X
(2) Define the intended outcomes of community engagement. X
(3) Determine whether to inform, consult, or negotiate. X
(4) Engage communities throughout the project cycle. X X X X X
(5) Allow communities to raise grievances. X X X X
(6) Promote internal and external monitoring. X X X X

SOUR C E : HE R B E R T SON 2 0 0 8

(note - allowing communities to raise grievances - interesting that there is no conflict resolution mentioned or considered)

Water Use

"Power plants, with or without CO2 capture, use large amounts of water."

"Note that water use for PC power plants more than doubles with the addition
of capture equipment."

"The impacts of increased water use associated with CO2 capture are related to the increased need for system cooling. As an alternative to wet cooling, facilities could use dry cooling technologies. There is a trade off between energy use and water use when dry cooling is employed. As a facility reduces water use, it increases energy use, which creates an additional energy penalty."

(Note- since the ethanol plant has been operating, we have had water issues and many wells go dry in the area close to it and now this calls for even MORE water, our most precious resource)

Seismic Activity (Page 74)

" The presence of seismically active faults does NOT exclude a site from either holding CO2 or being considered for storage, although a strong demonstration must be made that there would
be no risk of leakage resulting from seismic activity. There are many places in the world where large volumes of buoyant fluids (e.g., oil, gas, and CO2) are trapped indefinitely in the presence
of seismic activity, including California, Wyoming, Alaska, Turkey, Western Australia, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, and Iran. After the injection of almost 9,000 metric tons of CO2 in the
Nagaoka CCS demonstration, operations were disrupted by the Mid-Niigata Chuetsu 6.0-magnitude earthquake. Following careful evaluation, it was determined that the wells, the
reservoir, and the facility were intact and undamaged, and injection resumed (RIITE 2008)."

" Many aspects of a fault affect its ability to trap CO2 at a site. These include the geometry of the fault, its complexity, the orientation of the fault relative to regional stresses, the amount
and distribution of fault goug e, and the occurrence of either elevated or reduced pressure nearby (Yielding 1997). In some cases, it is relatively straightforward to obtain key pieces of
information that can be used to understand the potential risks presented by a fault or network of faults. Recently, Chiaramonte et al. (2007) gathered information to estimate the potential for
faults within one oil field to transmit CO2. In their calculation, one fault had a very low chance of becoming transmissive, and would require injections well above reasonable operational
pressures to act as a leakage conduit. In contrast, another fault network in a different part of the field would act as a conduit for CO2 in the presence of even a small injection. If this were an
operational site, the southern part of the field would be a good zone of storage, while the northern part would not because of the possibility for transmissive faults at operational pressures."

"This example highlights the need for careful site characterization in selection and the importance of high-quality data. The presence of large, active faults should not necessarily preclude prospective sites from selection as storage sites. Rather, the complex nature of faults in and associated with potential injection sites must be characterized, considered, and managed as part of a risk assessment and MMV plan. Hazard identification should focus on faults that could be transmissive within the injection reservoir or confining zone and expected project footprint, as faults only represent a substantial hazard if they can transmit large volumes of CO2."

(Note - the people who plan and conduct these risky experiments do not live in these communities nor do they have plans to live in them - In our community residents have been told that once CO2 injection enters the picture their homeowner's insurance will not cover man-made earthquakes.

CO2 Pipelines - from WRI

2009-07-25T18:12:00.006-04:00

Although CO2 pipelines are classified as hazardous, CO2 is not defined as a
hazardous substance. It is a Class L, highly volatile, nonflammable/nontoxic
material (CFRg, CFRe, Appendix B, Table 4).

CO2 pipelines are treated as hazardous and are reviewed as high-risk hazardous pipelines when they have a diameter greater than 457mm(18 in) or when they pass through High-Consequence Areas.

States certified to regulate intrastate pipelines are: Alabama, Arizona, California, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, New York, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Texas, Virginia,Washington, and West Virginia.

49 CFR § 195.2 defines low-stress pipeline as a hazardous liquid pipeline that is
operated in its entirety at a stress level of 20 percent or less of the specified minimum-yield strength of the pipeline (CFRf).

49 CFR § 195.2 defines rural area as an area outside the limits of any incorporated or unincorporated city, town, village, or any other designated residential or commercial area, such as a subdivision, a business or shopping center, or community development. The rural areas are considered to be the nonenvironmentally sensitive areas (CFRf).

An easement is a limited perpetual interest in land that allows the pipeline owner
to construct, operate, and maintain a pipeline across the land. An easement does
not grant an unlimited entitlement to use the right of way. The rights of the
easement owner are set out in the easement agreement.

Eminent domain is the power of government to take private land for public use.
Under current law there is no federal eminent domain power granted for the
construction of CO2 pipelines. A number of states, however, do allow the use of
eminent domain for CO2 pipeline construction under certain conditions.

The information above comes from the link below -

From WRI - World Resources Institute CCS Guidelines - this information is found on page 52

A System Model for Geologic Sequestration of Carbon Dioxide

2009-07-25T06:49:00.004-04:00

Read the full article here

In this paper we describe CO2-PENS, a comprehensive system level computational model for performance assessment of
geologic sequestration ofCO2. CO2-PENS is designed to perform probabilistic simulations of CO2 capture, transport, and injection in different geologic reservoirs. Additionally, the longterm fate of CO2 injected in geologic formations, including
possible migration out of the target reservoir, is simulated. The
simulations sample from probability distributions for each
uncertain parameter, leading to estimates of global uncertainty
that accumulate through coupling of processes as the simulation time advances. Each underlying process in the systemlevel model is built as a module that can be modified as the simulation tool evolves toward more complex problems. This approach is essential in coupling processes that are governed by different sets of equations operating at different timescales. We first explain the basic formulation of the system level model, briefly discuss the suite of process-level modules that are linked to the system level, and finally give an in depth example that describes the system level coupling between an injection module and an economic module. The example shows how physics-based calculations of the number of wells required to inject a given amount of CO2 and estimates of plume size can impact long-term sequestration costs.

Research for Deployment: Incorporating Risk, Regulation, and Liability for Carbon Capture and Sequestration

2009-07-25T05:38:00.005-04:00

Read the full article here
Slide 1

Research for Deployment: Incorporating Risk, Regulation,and Liability for Carbon Capture and Sequestration

Slide 1

Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) has the potential to enable deep reductions in global carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, however this promise can only be fulfilled with large-scale deployment. For this to happen, CCS must be successfully embedded into a larger legal and regulatory context, and any potential risks must be effectively managed. We developed a list of outstanding research and technical questions driven by the demands of the regulatory and legal systems for the geologic sequestration (GS) component of CCS. We then looked at case studies that bound uncertainty within two of the research themes that emerge. These case studies, on surface leakage from abandoned wells and groundwater quality impacts from metals mobilization, illustrate how research can inform decision makers on issues of policy, regulatory need, and legal considerations. A central challenge is to ensure that the research program supports development of general regulatory and legal frameworks, and also the development of geological, geophysical, geochemical, and modeling methods necessary for effective GS site monitoring and verification (M&V) protocols, as well as mitigation and remediation plans. If large-scale deployment of GS is to occur in a manner that adequately protects human and ecological health and does not discourage private investment, strengthening the scientific underpinnings of regulatory and legal decision-making is crucial.

Slide 1
Potential Groundwater Quality Impacts from Metals Mobilization.

Groundwater merits special attention because it is a precious resource, and it is subject to current regulation. While there are several ways in which large-scale injection or leakage might affect water supplies, most attention has focused on CO₂−brine−rock interactions. While processes in this system could affect both organic and inorganic geochemistry of aquifers, only the mobilization of inorganic compounds, chiefly metals, through dissolution and transport will be considered here.

South Liberty (Frio) Pilot, TX.

In 2004, a DOE pilot field experiment in South Liberty, TX injected 1800 t of CO₂ into the Frio saline formation (29). This injection was designed to validate simulations of CO₂ transport and fate in one of the largest saline formations in the United States. A monitoring well located 100 ft. from the injection well collected direct fluid samples using a U-tube apparatus (30). This tool and others detected arrival of a CO₂ plume in the monitoring well 7 days after injection.

Of note, a substantial amount of dissolved metal was recovered in the U-tube (31). Initially, workers thought that the well casing was reacting to carbonic acid in the reservoir. However, laboratory studies and geochemical analyses confirmed that a substantial fraction of the metals were the product of mineral dissolution, specifically the oxide and hydroxide coatings of mineral grains that represent <2%>31). The rapidity of mobilization and the high concentrations suggested strongly that carbonic acid formed from dissolved CO₂ in formation brines might quickly and dramatically alter groundwater chemistry.

The Frio was the first saline formation analyzed in this way. Ultimately, this result is not unexpected, yet it is not clear whether this effect of metal mobilization is common or significant at depth. It is also not clear what fraction of metals would be transported with CO₂ should it leak to other formations. However, it raised the concern that should CO₂ leak into a shallow freshwater aquifer, there could be consequences that could negatively affect groundwater quality, potentially impacting public health and acceptance of CCS deployment.

Carbonate and Siliclastic Systems.

To a first order, both injection targets and shallow aquifers can be divided into siliciclastic or carbonate systems. This division reflects the primary composition of the reservoir rocks. Carbonate systems chiefly comprise calcite, aragonite, dolomite, and other carbonate minerals that form limestones and dolostones, whereas siliciclastic systems chiefly comprise frag ments of quartz, feldspar, and other siliceous minerals that form sandstones, siltstones, and shales.

This compositional difference greatly affects the response of carbon acid. Silicate minerals react slowly with CO₂, which means that there is little change in porosity and permeability over the duration of injection; however, the brines with dissolved CO₂ will remain acidic. In contrast, carbonate rocks react quickly with CO₂ and could change permeability and porosity quickly; however, the rapid kinetics will result in rapid increase of brine pH and buffering of the brine−CO₂ system, reducing reactivity over time. Because of these competing effects, it is not clear which fundamental rock composition is more prone to leakage or to mobilizations of metals, and little work has focused on direct comparison of these two primary aquifer compositions.

Key U.S. Freshwater Aquifer Settings.

Given the distribution of CO₂ point sources and potential GS reservoirs, it is likely that CO₂ storage will be concentrated in a small number of basins. To understand and appraise the potential for metal mobilization in shallow aquifers, it would be helpful to understand the composition and acid-reaction response near the surface of these basins. Table 2 provides a subset of key shallow aquifers in these basins and some issues around their geology.

From National Commission on Energy Policy- CCS

2009-07-25T00:17:00.004-04:00

Read the full article here - http://www.energycommission.org/ht/action/GetDocumentAction/i/3054
Below are a few excerpts from the National Commission on Energy Policy -

Although the theoretical carbon-storage capacity of underground geological repositories in the United States is plentiful, large-scale deployment of CCS would nevertheless require significant investments in infrastructure, possibly including thousands of miles of dedicated carbon dioxide pipelines.

In addition, under optimistic deployment scenarios, many thousands of wells could be required to inject carbon dioxide into underground repositories.

Whether this type of infrastructure would be likely to encounter significant obstacles related to siting and public acceptance is an open question. The limited research available on this topic—most of which has focused on general perceptions of CCS, rather than on likely public reaction if new wells and reservoirs are proposed for a specific community— suggest that CCS is not well known or understood by the public. When introduced to CCS along with a range of other options, most respondents prefer what they consider to be alternatives such as energy efficiency or renewable energy for reducing emissions.45

In sum,efforts to educate the public about CCS and to provide for public input on related siting and other decisions are likely to be critical to advancing this technology.

No provisions are in place, however, to regulate the long-term storage of carbon dioxide which—because it would require measures to prevent venting back to the atmosphere—could involve
new provisions for risk assessment, for monitoring the performance of wells, for assuring the permanence of the carbon stored, and for managing long-term liability if a reservoir leaks.

Large-scale CCS projects would likely also require the assessment of additional risks, including the risk of large releases of carbon dioxide to nearby population centers, risks to groundwater quality, and risks from reactivity with underground minerals and solutions.

Carnegie Mellon team makes sequestration recommendations

2009-07-24T23:28:00.003-04:00

Carnegie Mellon team makes sequestration recommendations

Shared via AddThis

These might look like good suggestions, UNLESS you happen to live where they plan to inject it.
I believe we'd be more comfortable with this if the same scale CCS project was first implemented under the state capital

As with anything that changes and/or impacts the environment, the people living there should have a vote!

CO2 Sequestration - A Ticking Time Bomb?

2009-07-24T07:33:00.005-04:00

Many thanks to the unknown photographer who took, tweaked and sent this photo -

Darke County Ohio is speaking out AGAINST CO2 - please see the Daily Advocate and its CO2 blog for many related articles.

Please see our web site to order "No CO2 pins, T-shirts, Yard Signs or Car Window Clings"
Look for us downtown during the Annie Oakley Parade