From: Chris Knight, The Express-Times
Published May 27, 2009 09:35 AM

Pennsylvania wants to allow power companies to capture carbon dioxide emissions and put them into the ground

Unlike trash disposal, carbon dioxide cannot be dumped ina landfill, shipped away or burned.

But some Pennsylvania lawmakers hope to find another place for the greenhouse gas that scientists implicate as the main cause of global warming.

They're looking to bury it.

Carbon capture and sequestration would take a stream of compressed carbon dioxide directly from electric utilities and pump it underground into depleted oil fields, shale formations and aquifers thousands of feet below ground. There, proponents hope, the gas will be permanently stored.

Pennsylvania's geology could store at least 100 years worth of the state's annual carbon dioxide emissions, according to a report released earlier this month by the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. Such an amount would be significant: Pennsylvania emits 1 percent of the world's annual carbon dioxide emissions.

Pumping millions of pounds of pressurized gas more than 2,500 feet below ground is not easy.

Some environmental groups and power companies say carbon capture and storage is still decades away from being commercially feasible.

"It's a very promising technology," said PPL spokesman Bryan Hay. "We are supporting a lot of discussions on it, but it's still in very many ways in its infancy."

At the same time, a statewide carbon capture and storage network could create thousands of green jobs, said Rep. Greg Vitali, D-Delaware, a sponsor of a bill mandating minimum carbon storage for Pennsylvania electric utilities by 2015.

Lawmaker: It could be a boon to Pennsylvania

Vitali's bill, introduced March 12 as House Bill 80, would require electric distribution companies to get at least 3 percent of their electricity from coal-fired plants that capture and sequester carbon by 2015. A companion bill was also introduced in the State Senate.

"It could be a boon to Pennsylvania," Vitali said, "If we become a leader, we could export this to India and China and other countries that are putting up coal-fired facilities."

The House Environmental Resource and Energy Committee held a public hearing Thursday in which stakeholders discussed Vitali's proposed bill. Vitali said the public hearing was constructive and hopes to get the bill to a House vote before it breaks for summer.

Gov. Ed Rendell has been supportive of the legislation and is currently pursuing federal funds to help develop a carbon sequestration network, a spokesman said,

The most promising locations for sites are in central and western Pennsylvania, Conservation Secretary John Quigley said. In those regions, records of more than 160,000 oil and gas wells revealed detailed information about the geology. Eastern Pennsylvania was not ruled out for carbon storage, but would be an unknown until further tests.

Quigley said locating an appropriate individual storage site would require at least two years of site-specific investigation, after which it would still take years to build the infrastructure required to pressurize and pump liquid carbon dioxide underground.

With the most aggressive timeline and support, the state may be able to locate and prepare a site to accept carbon by 2015, the date also set by the current House and Senate bills, Quigley said.

Environmental groups question time frame

Committing to 3 percent of power from carbon-sequestered sources in just six years is a time frame unlikely to occur, said Nathan Willcox, of PennEnvironment, an environmental advocacy group.

"There's potential for sequestration to work in Pennsylvania, but the million-dollar word is potential," Willcox said. "It's never been done and we are not at all sure that it's going to work."

If it doesn't work, the risks range from gradual leakage, which would only be a waste of effort and energy, to low probability but high-risk scenarios such as contaminating the water supply or a catastrophic release of carbon dioxide all at once.

Sierra Club Pennsylvania Chapter Director Jeff Schmidt said sequestration could have other undesirable effects.

"It could potentially cause earthquake-like activities, and under the bill that has been introduced, the state would be liable for any of these side effects," Schmidt said.

Both groups support carbon sequestration, but on timescales that include enough time for site selection and safety tests. The end result, they fear, may be a flurry of new state-subsidized coal-fired power plants that can sequester carbon, but never do because the carbon sequestration doesn't work.