Alberta moving to take lead in carbon capture and storage
By Mark Lowey
Communications Director, ISEEE
Alberta is poised to become a North American leader in deploying carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
In a new initiative, the University of Calgary (U of C) plans to build the first CCS monitoring, research and training centre of its kind on the continent.
That comes on top of a $2-billion provincial government commitment to help kick-start four private-sector, large-scale CCS demonstration projects in Alberta by 2015.
In addition, the U of C’s Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment and Economy (ISEEE) has invested $3 million of Natural Resources Canada funding on CCS research aimed at overcoming barriers to industry implementing CCS projects.
The U of C is also home to Carbon Management Canada Inc., a new federally funded Network of Centres of Excellence created jointly by ISEEE and the Canada School of Energy and Environment.
The goal of the network, which includes 21 Canadian universities with industry and government partners, is to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions from Canada’s fossil energy industry – including using CCS.
“Alberta has become the hub for this national effort. We are well positioned to develop cost-effective CCS technologies and train the skilled workforce needed to safely operate them,” says David Layzell, ISEEE’s executive director.
“We expect to link university researchers to industry partners deploying the demonstration CCS projects,” Mr. Layzell adds. “This will provide important insights on lower-cost carbon capture technologies, secure carbon storage and risk-management strategies.”
This all sounds impressive, but what exactly is CCS? These new age technologies involve the capture of carbon dioxide (CO2) at industrial facilities such as coal-fired power plants, and pipelining the CO2 to areas where it can be injected deep underground and permanently “sequestered” or stored – keeping the greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere.
Alberta, which emitted 223 million tonnes (Mt) of GHGs per year in 2004, wants carbon capture and storage technologies to be cutting 139 Mt/yr by 2050.
“That’s a tall order,” says Don Lawton, a professor and ISEEE fellow in the U of C’s Department of Geoscience, who is spearheading the university’s research and training centre initiative and also leads Carbon Management Canada’s CCS research team.
Plans call for the four private sector projects to together reduce up to five mega-tonnes of GHGs per year by 2015. That is a tiny fraction of Alberta’s more than 10,000 Mt of potential geological storage capacity.
“So if we’re going to get anywhere near the government’s goal and to make a significant difference, then CCS will have to be up-scaled rapidly,” Mr. Lawton notes.
Pending regulatory and community approval, the research and training centre, to be established on university-owned land in a rural area about 40 kilometres southwest of Calgary, should be injecting small amounts of CO2 underground by 2012, Mr. Lawton says.
“We need to do this kind of comprehensive monitoring, risk evaluation and training to assure the public that this is a safe technology,” Mr. Lawton says.
To read the The Globe and Mail's entire Climate Change Special Report, click here.
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