Cooking With Explosive Gas

Both the United States and China are actively seeking solutions to curb emissions of carbon dioxide generated by burning fossil fuels. Some are more fanciful than others and frankly non-starters. The carbon capture and storage initiative being explored by the Obama administration tops that list ,in my book. The idea is to siphon off the carbon dioxide from the smokestacks of power plants and pump it into deep underground storage tanks before it enters the environment and warms the atmosphere. The government is spending $2.4 billion from the U.S. stimulus package on carbon capture and storage projects.

“A mere down payment…the administration may be digging a very expensive dry hole. I mean it literally,” wrote Washington columnist Eugene Robinson in a June 2009 column. I agree, but I would add that it is not only expensive, but explosive.

Scientists and engineers will have to prove that the possibility of a sudden catastrophic carbon dioxide release from a storage site is impossible. “Catastrophic” because carbon dioxide is heavier than air, and a ground-hugging cloud would suffocate anyone it enveloped. That is what happened in Cameroon in 1986, when naturally occurring carbon dioxide trapped at the bottom of Lake Nyos erupted and killed 1,746 people in nearby villages.

China, unlike the U.S., is looking at building more nuclear power plants to meet future energy needs as it struggles with what to do to minimize carbon dioxide emissions generated by power plants that are dependent on fossil fuels. Now that it has become the top greenhouse gas polluter, China is trying to grapple with U.S. and international pressure to curb its rising CO emissions. The dilemma Beijing faces is that its leadership does not want to be distracted from building its economy by accepting a ceiling on greenhouse gas output, which even optimistic mainland experts expect to keep rising until around 2030.

Now that there is new evidence that the planet itself has begun to contribute to global warming through fallout from human activity, time is of the essence. Huge amounts of gases such as methane ─ an even more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide ─ trapped for millennia in the Arctic permafrost may be starting to leak into the atmosphere, speeding up the warming process. The March 2009 IPCC report calls on policymakers to take urgent steps to keep average global temperatures from increasing more than two degrees Centigrade, compared to pre-industrial levels. The time for action is upon us.

“Rapid, sustained, and effective mitigation is required to avoid ‘dangerous climate change’ regardless of how it is defined,” the report says. Achieving this goal, the report concludes, would require industrialized nations to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 25-40 percent from 1990 levels. Deep emission cuts are essential.

By 2030, annual emissions of carbon dioxide could reach 8 to 10 billion tons a year, unless tough action is taken, said He Jiankun, a professor at Tsinghua University who advises the government on emissions. “Ultimately, there will have to be compromise in Copenhagen, because these negotiations can’t be allowed to collapse,” He said. “If they do fall apart, that will be devastating, and nobody will be spared the repercussions.”

Why don’t the Chinese and U.S. governments spend their money and energy on solar, wind and other renewable energy sources instead of trying to deal with pollutants from nuclear and fossil fuels?