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Updated: May 8th, 2008 - 20:33:00 |
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It’s billed as the province’s best hope for the environment. So far, it’s not planned for southern Alberta.
But pumping excess carbon dioxide into underground caverns has been announced as Alberta’s plan to reduce global warming, with several high-powered studies already in the works. And Lethbridge-area environmentalists are ready to debate its impacts here as well.
“It’s already being discussed,” says Paul Bohnert, newly elected president of the Southern Alberta Group for the Environment. “What does this mean to southern Alberta?”
Carbon sequestration will be one of the issues on the table in June, he says, during a public meeting on climate change. Representatives of the city, university and college are expected to take part in the consultation.
“We want to open this up to the public,” he adds.
While preparing for that event, Bohnert says, the group will also be helping organize an environmental summit at the end of May, in collaboration with the Piikani Nation. Again, a cross-section of southern Albertans who’ve studied global warming and other environmental concerns will be taking part.
“We have a group of well-educated people in this region,” he says.
On the research front meanwhile, University of Calgary scientist David Keith has announced a full-scale assessment of carbon dioxide storage potential near major power generating plants on Lake Wabamun. It’s expected to assess the geological and technical requirements for a large project, along with its economic feasibility. It will also report on various regulatory issues to be considered by government officials.
“Carbon capture and storage is currently one of the best options we have for achieving large cuts in emissions within reasonable costs and time frames,” says Keith, principal investigator for the university and an industry consortium.
Priced at $850,000, the study will be co-ordinated by the Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment and Economy at U of C, and it’s due for completion by fall next year.
Calgary-based Enbridge Inc. has also announced plans for major sequestration project at one or more locations to be determined. Along with 18 energy-industry partners including Atco Power and Epcor Utilities, it says it will identify suitable locations and then launch a pilot project.
So far, Keith says, the U of C study is the only technical research underway.
“There’s been a lot more talk than action,” he says.
So far, he adds, talk has centred around projects in the Edmonton area or farther north. While underground spaces beneath southern Alberta might be suitable, they’re distant from most of the plants creating the emissions.
Another group has, meanwhile, proposed a sequestration project near Redwater, northeast of Edmonton. And in the capital, Alberta Environment public affairs officer Kim McLeod says a report is due this fall from another panel that’s been asked to design an Alberta sequestration program.
Across Alberta, she points out, carbon dioxide has been injected underground for years. It’s been used in smaller quantities as part of enhanced oil recovery projects.
In Saskatchewan earlier this week, Prime Minister Stephen Harper joined provincial officials to confirm a $240-million federal grant for a carbon sequestration scheme near Estevan — where improved oil production is also one of its goals.
What’s new now, says McLeod, is the scope of injection proposals not aimed at oilfield enhancement. Instead, companies could be rewarded for sequestering carbon dioxide as part of the province’s emissions control strategy.
Injection sites would be determined after detailed geological studies, she adds. They’re typically 800 metres or more below surface, she says — about twice as deep as water wells tapping into the deepest aquifers. Trapped beneath bedrock, the compressed and liquefied gas is injected into saline water bodies where it could remain hundreds of years.
But some could be as deep as three kilometres underground, Keith points out. At that depth, the subterranean burial sites could co-exist with oil or gas reserves closer to the surface. |
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by Lethbridge Herald.com
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