Denmark Inaugurates World's First Cross-Border CO2 Storage Site (euractiv.com) 29
New submitter sonlas writes: Denmark is inaugurating Project Greensand, the first cross-border CO2 storage site, shipping CO2 from Belgium to store it into a depleted oil field under the Danish North Sea. "With the first injection taking place on Wednesday, the project aims to safely and permanently store up to eight million tons of CO2 every year by 2030, the equivalent of 40% of Denmark's emission reduction target and over 10% of the country's annual emissions," reports Euractiv. However, this is to be put in perspective with global CO2 emissions, which reached a new high of more than 36.8 billions tons in 2022.
A report by Rystad Energy shows that if investments were to quadruple, we should be able to capture 150 million of tons of CO2 per year by 2025, still a drop of water in, or under, the ocean. Furthermore, the whole process of sequestering CO2 underground emits itself ~21% of the amount of CO2 stored, as shown in a study by Australian think tank IEEFA.
A report by Rystad Energy shows that if investments were to quadruple, we should be able to capture 150 million of tons of CO2 per year by 2025, still a drop of water in, or under, the ocean. Furthermore, the whole process of sequestering CO2 underground emits itself ~21% of the amount of CO2 stored, as shown in a study by Australian think tank IEEFA.
Hope it doesn't leak (Score:3)
That would be one hell of a fart.
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Humans have such a long history of burying thigns they don't want to deal with now, and inevitably complaining about it later.
Doesn't matter if it's garbage or sludge or nuclear waste or CO2 or whatever. We'll just stick it in the ground and make it somebody else's problem later.
Nevermind the fact that it'll be MUCH harder to deal with down the road and we'll be lamenting about how we really should have just dealt with it then instead of kicking the can.
And really, of all the things we've been burying, thi
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Nevermind the fact that it'll be MUCH harder to deal with down the road
There's nothing to deal with here. We're not dumping garbage in a pit, we're refilling something that we previously emptied which has been like that for millions of years. Literally we're putting carbon back where we got it from sans the hydrogen.
Re:Hope it doesn't leak (Score:5, Informative)
It is a geological formation that held methane for millions of years. CO2 is far less mobile than methane. Leaks are very unlikely.
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plants.
use c o 2 to breathe.
and this solution was deemed as more economical than planting.
was bit coin involved with this
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and this solution was deemed as more economical than planting.
It is possible for humanity to do more than one thing at a time.
Nobody is suggesting that sequestering CO2 should replace planting trees. We can do both.
Underground smokescreen (Score:4, Interesting)
So they are basically storing Oxygen. The problem is not CO2 itself (nature can cope with that), the problem is that we are producing way too much of it. Without solving the real problem, this just means that they are storing Oxygen. Exactly this happened in Biosphere II, as the concrete used to build it was still binding CO2.
It is a bit like fighting a forest fire by storing the smoke.
Re: Underground smokescreen (Score:1, Informative)
Re: Underground smokescreen (Score:5, Informative)
CO2 is more stable than carbon and oxygen separately, so you have to add energy to split it apart... and the majority of the output is likely to be 2CO + O2, so you're producing a lot of dangerous gas.
CO is carbon monoxide, it kills you if you inhale too much, which is why we like having alarms that detect it in our homes.
Re: Underground smokescreen (Score:2)
And unlike CO2, the body cannot detect CO.
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Oh please, you get a massive headache, flushed pink skin, and paralysis to let you know what happened while you wait helplessly and miserably to die.
It's a flawless detection system!
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My chemistry isn't up to this, but I _think_ if you burn wood into charcoal, you end up with a carbon-heavy output (which presumably you can compress into balls to drop down the well). Apparently this idea has some legs though: https://www.newscientist.com/a... [newscientist.com] Of course, you need the wood to start with.
If you want to suck the C from the CO2 in the air directly, then there are a load of nasty chemicals required, and lots of energy. So that method is pretty tricky.
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Better yet, put that carbon in a nuclear reactor and turn it into something else! Fuse it with hydrogen and make nitrogen! Or maybe we can split carbon and make lithium! If only we had an unlimited source of energy to transmute elements at will. Wouldn't that be something.
Who gets the carbon credits? (Score:2)
Who is paying for this? (Score:2)
Capturing this CO2, liquefying it, then pumping it into the ground sounds expensive with no possibility of any monetary return on that investment. So, who is going to pay for this?
My guess is this is being paid for with some kind of tax on fossil fuels. That means the project will lose all funding should the taxes be successful in discouraging fossil fuel use. Sounds like the equally bad idea of funding child healthcare with tobacco taxes. This meant when the taxes successfully discouraged tobacco use t
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Capturing this CO2, liquefying it, then pumping it into the ground sounds expensive
Man are you in for a surprise when you learn where beer gets its bubbles from. We have a lot of industrial processes that create excess CO2 already in an easily storable form. We just need to pump it somewhere. The hard part of carbon sequestration is applying it to large emitting sources like coal power plants, but that's not what they are doing here.
My guess is this is being paid for with some kind of tax on fossil fuels. That means the project will lose all funding should the taxes be successful in discouraging fossil fuel use.
So... task failed successfully? That's the whole point isn't it?
How is "cross border" significant? (Score:2)
It's a world first, right? I'm having trouble getting why crossing a border is something worth pointing out as a world first.
Re: How is "cross border" significant? (Score:2)
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I see! Well that's kind of like saying that an NFL quarterback just broke the record for the most passes in a Thursday-night game when the temperature is below 30 degrees. Sure, it may be a record, but it has no significance beyond giving commentators something to jabber about..
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Hey, being a headline writer is hard when you have AI knocking at your door to take your job.
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Good point! Maybe AI actually did write that headline!
Plant Trees (Score:2)