No, it’s actually a really stupid idea. Driven by dioxycarbophobia its entire purpose is to deprive the biosphere of a fundamental nutrient. The only time it’s acceptable is in enhanced oil and gas recovery (and you get most of the CO2 back along with the opportunity to return more carbon previously lost from the biosphere).
Carmen Dybwad sizes up her inquisitor and wonders aloud if he might possibly be old enough to remember Bob Stanfield, described by some historians as “the best prime minister we never had.”
Well, in the same way, Dybwad says the carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology that has had such a high profile in southern Saskatchewan over the last decade “might very well be the best technology we never used in terms of wrestling large emissions to the ground.”
Unless, of course, it can be shown to not only work, but work in an economic sense that will cause governments and corporations beyond SaskPower (which is incorporating CCS into its planned Boundary Dam Unit 3 power-generation plant near Estevan) to adopt it. Balancing that, another high-profile project in Alberta was cancelled last week because the economics seemed weak.
Moving CCS forward is one of the things she tries to do in her role as CEO of the Regina-based International Performance Assessment Centre for Geologic Storage of CO2 (IPAC CO2). Last Monday saw it bring together executives, civil servants and academics for a discussion of the economic potential of CCS.
Reduced to its basics, CCS is a technology that captures industrial emissions of CO2 before they enter the atmosphere, stores them and reuses them. It could be a key piece of controlling CO2 emissions standards – if it can be “salable.”
