Breakthrough Senior Fellow and climate science and policy expert Roger Pielke Jr. weighs in on a lecture by Michael Celia, chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Princeton about carbon capture and geological sequestration.
By Roger Pielke Jr, Cross posted from Prometheus
I just heard an interesting talk by Michael Celia, chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Princeton. The talk (abstract in PDF) was remarkably bullish on the idea of geologic sequestration, even though Prof. Celia emphasized that he did not see his role as an advocate for CCS. Points that I took from the lecture:
1. Storage reservoirs are not an issue for CCS to make a major contribution to the problem. Celia spoke of 2-3 "wedges" but this was not expressed as a ceiling.
2. Leakage seems to be a non-issue, in some respects, but a lot hinges on how the policy process defines "leakage". From the standpoint of contributing to less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, leakage appears to be rather small, based on his research.
3. When asked about costs, he said that the cost is a "non issue" (though he said that his response was a bit flippant). he observed that he understood the costs of CCS to add about $0.06 kW/hr, and pointed out that there is no reason for anyone to pay these costs without some price of carbon emissions.
4. He was pretty dismissive of ocean sequestration when asked, but didn't offer much more than suggesting that it was politically not viable.
Overall, it was a very bullish presentation on CCS.
You can check out Pielke's extensive blog about technology and science policy at http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/
