Jan 16 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Brian Nearing Albany Times Union, N.Y.

The state is joining the hunt for the holy grail of global warming -- a way to reach deep underground to permanently entomb fossil fuel-emitted carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that fuels rising temperatures.

This summer, geologists will study old natural gas wells and other subterranean features in the Southern Tier and western New York as potential resting places for pumped-in CO2 from power plants, under a $4 million, three-year program by the state Energy Research and Development Authority and a host of energy companies.

The storage method known as sequestration could give extended life to high-CO2 fuels like coal and oil, whose emissions are worsening global warming.

President Bush has been a powerful advocate for sequestration, which could help the fuel industry avoid potential CO2 emission limits that climate scientists say will be needed to to avoid catastrophic temperature increases.

"This is one of our efforts to mitigate climate change," said authority President and CEO Paul Tonko. "We are going to scope out areas that might be suitable for this and address some of the geological uncertainties."

Nearly a dozen fossil-fuel-based companies are providing $2.3 million toward the state effort. They include AES Eastern Energy, which owns coal-fired power plants near Buffalo, Johnson City in Broome County, and Cayuga and Seneca lakes in the Finger Lakes, and Nornew, a company that owns natural gas fields in the Southern Tier.

Tonko said preliminary field studies done last year identified areas with the porous geologic features necessary to hold large amounts of CO2 and prevent it from escaping into the atmosphere.

Field researchers will use seismic equipment to study sandstone, limestone and shale formations in the Southern Tier counties of Broome, Chenango, Cayuga, Steuben, Yates, Schuyler and Tompkins, and also in Erie, Chautauqua and Cattaraugus counties in the western edge of the state, Tonko said.

Geologists from the State Museum also will study storage potential of shale formations.

"Our target will be from 2,500 feet to 10,000 feet underground," said John Martin, a senior project manager with the authority.

Trucks outfitted with seismic frequency collectors and "thumpers" will vibrate the ground and collect reflected sound waves to build a three-dimensional underground map. Areas of fractured sandstone or limestone -- sometimes mixed with salty water -- have the room needed to hold CO2.

Also, the state is joining the federal Midwest Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership, one of seven state partnerships supported financially by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Today, the cost of carbon storage appears prohibitively expensive at up to $300 per ton, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. That would greatly increase the cost of electricity generated by coal, which accounts for half of the nation's electricity.

The government's goal is to reduce that storage cost to less than $10 per ton by 2015.

DOE estimates underground saline formations could store up to 500 billion tons, according to the agency's Web page on the effort. That's equivalent to 300 years of the U.S. total CO2 emissions of 1.6 billion tons in 2004.

More study needs to be done but the storage method does have risks. One danger could be the sudden and unintended release of CO2 gases into the atmosphere if an underground storage area were to crack or rupture.

Coal accounts for more than a third of all U.S. fossil-fuel CO2 emissions, according to DOE's Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center. Nearing can be reached at 454-5094 or by e-mail at bnearing@timesunion.com.