My Turn: U.S. Policy on Carbon Capture and Sequestration is Limited

The energy waste issue facing the United States today should be open for innovative ideas of value by regular folks and not just reserved to a select group of big businesses, universities, and well-funded national labs. These traditional entities are needed, however considering the enormous energy waste problem we now have, much more is required.

The daunting task of carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and safe sequestration should be opened-up to anyone with good ideas and good verifiable results.

Legislation is needed that would give states or federal regulatory agencies power to make seed companies eligible for depletion allowances or development cost write-offs for carbon capture and safe sequestration (CCSS).

A new law will enable a new tax status clarification and open up for anyone with a working apparatus yielding good results (verifiable), the much needed incentive to develop.

The recognizable national resources to develop are new, limited, and unregulated: sources of atmospheric CO2.

Working methods involve CO2 collection, separation, and solidification - processes for capture and safe storage. These are needed to explore as alternative concepts not limited to CO2 gas-to-liquid conversion, piped, and stored in empty oil wells.

Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) is a process for carbon sequestration favored in recent times. The process advocates expending a lot of energy to put CO2 under about 5 atmospheres which forms liquid CO2. The proposal is to simply pour it into an oil well and - poof - oil that was stuck there, comes out at the same time the bad stuff goes away (CO2).

There's a problem with this. Ignoring entropy and thermodynamics is not sustainable. If for some reason things go wrong, and the stuff comes back out as CO2 vapor - to breathe, we may need to wear space suits.

It's quite possible Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) is not the best practice to adopt. EOR is one idea of the kind of profitable considerations brought forth in our present state of ignorance about the basic forces of nature.

Other methods are needed.

More reasonable methods are straightforward carbonate, bicarbonate, or chalk formation by design or by sea animals.

Evidence of CO2 capture and storage by Cretaceous Period sea-life dominates the view along the Southern coast of England.

Chalk formation world-wide was formed by tiny sea creatures which dined on CO2-harvesting phytoplankton. The resulting carbon storage settled to the sea floor over millions of years accumulating a precursor to limestone and marble.

We know CO2 sequestration for marine reef habitats is possible. Carbonate made from carbon dioxide is limestone. Limestone mixed with clay and volcanic ash hardens underwater as cement-like solid.

This idea was put forth by the Romans in the 5th century BC. They may not have known about CO2, but their cement still holds up aqueducts and part of the Coliseum.

CO2 modification, treatment, and exploratory mitigation experiments should be opened and dealt with on many fronts.

The United States Department of Energy (DOE) Advanced Research (ARPA-E), accepted only 1% of the thousands of proposals on this subject submitted for funding during 2009 and 2010.

July 16, 2010 the DOE announced all winners of research projects aiming to improve how the U.S. uses and produces energy. The entire 1% of applicants for 2010, will accelerate institutional innovation because most money went to universities, large businesses, and national labs. The awards complete ARPA-E's grants under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Innovation in 18 states and 43 projects will receive the $92 million.

The 1% practice effectively creates a non-proliferation of research and development for other entities because at least 4200 other ideas were left out and 32 states. Methodologies having good results cannot advance without support.

In the 1950's, a lack of regulation on geothermal development resulted in the Geothermal Resources Act. This legislation gave California's Division of Oil and Gas jurisdiction over geothermal resources.

With a legal and tax status clarified in the 1970's, technical problems could be solved by individuals in the smallest of companies; exploration investment risks were compensated for - treated the same as those enjoyed by big oil companies competing for fossil fuel.

Today, this example is worth another look; the new national resource is carbon.

Kenneth D. Murray