Canada may bury CO2 pollutants in prairie

by Margaret Munro

Some 10 to 100 mm tons a year -- as much as a quarter of the carbon dioxide now emitted by Canada's 700 most polluting factories, oil refineries and electricity plants -- could eventually be buried, says the report, which notes the sedimentary basin under the Prairies is enormous and ideal for soaking up CO2.
"Picture a sponge," says co-author Bill Reynen, a science and technology director at Natural Resources Canada. A sponge, he adds, kilometres thick and hundreds of kilometres across that could sop up emissions for at least 100 years.

The report, entitled Canada's CO2 Capture and Storage Technology Roadmap, was drawn up over the last three years with input from key players in the country's energy sector and Alberta's energy research community. Natural Resources, a federal government department, published the 89-page report this month, but it does not reflect government policy, Reynen says. He describes it as a "guidance or reference" document -- one that's emphatic about the need for action.
"The time to invest in CCS (carbon capture and storage) is now," the report states.

The report says almost 3.4 mm tons a year could be economically captured in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin "today" with "many more megatons available if appropriate policies emerge for dealing with CO2 emissions." The report was commissioned by the Liberal government, but appears to offer the federal Conservatives a guide for reducing pollution from large industries without offending Alberta's energy sector.
Environment Minister Rona Ambrose has indicated carbon capture will be a prominent part of the government's "made-in-Canada" plan expected this autumn.

A Canadian carbon storage project -- an EnCana operation in Weyburn, Saskatchewan -- has drawn worldwide attention and is held up internationally as evidence that carbon sequestration can work. The federal report suggests carbon sequestration would allow Alberta's energy companies to bury one of their biggest environmental problems -- carbon dioxide -- and keep on expanding. Injecting carbon could also enhance energy recovery by flushing more gas and oil out of underground reservoirs.
Alberta is "uniquely situated" to take advantage of carbon capture, Reynen says.

Alberta emitted 224 mm tons of CO2 into the atmosphere in 2005, more than any other province in the country and almost one-third of Canada's total annual emissions of 750 mm tons. As it happens, Alberta's biggest polluters sit on or near geological formations with the potential to soak up vast amounts of CO2.
Central Canada does not have "suitable geological media" close by, he says, but pipelines could gather carbon from big emitters in Central Canada and carry it to US or Prairie storage sites. The Atlantic provinces could stash some of their CO2 in coal beds.

The most likely prospects for CO2 collection are emitters in the oilsands, and fertilizer, ethanol and ethylene oxide industries, which produce exit gases that are almost pure CO2. Rather than sending the gas into the atmosphere, it could be diverted into pipelines and injected several km underground.
Researchers both internationally and at Alberta Research Council have been advocating underground carbon storage for years, and there are plans to capture carbon from the oilsands in north-eastern Alberta and pipe it south for underground storage.

Another proposal calls for "clean" coal-fired power plants in Saskatchewan that would capture and bury the CO2 that would otherwise end up in the air. The rollout of technology, expertise and know-how for capturing CO2 is "the prize to be won," says the report: "Canada couldbecome an example of how to tackle the issue of climate change while continuing to increase the value of its fossil fuel resource base, all the while developing and commercializing technology for the world to use."
The report pegs the cost at $ 3 to $ 80 for every ton of CO2 captured, depending on the source of the gas and how far it needs to travel.
 

Source: The Calgary Herald