A carbon sink is a natural reservoir that stores carbon-containing chemical compounds accumulated over an indefinite period of time. The process by which carbon sinks remove carbon dioxide (CO
2) from the atmosphere is known as carbon sequestration. Public awareness of the significance of CO2 sinks has grown since passage of the Kyoto Protocol, which promotes their use as a form of carbon offset. There are also different strategies used to enhance this process.
FutureGen is a project (now suspended) to demonstrate capture and sequestration of waste carbon dioxide from a coal-fired electrical generating station. The project (renamed FutureGen 2.0) was retrofitting a shuttered coal-fired power plant in Meredosia, Illinois, with oxy-combustion generators. The waste CO2 would be piped approximately 30 miles (48 km) to be sequestered in underground saline formations. FutureGen was a partnership between the United States government and an alliance of primarily coal-related corporations. Costs were estimated at US$1.65 billion, with $1.0 billion provided by the Federal Government.
The National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) is a U.S. national laboratory under the Department of Energy Office of Fossil Energy. NETL focuses on applied research for the clean production and use of domestic energy resources. NETL performs research and development on the supply, efficiency, and environmental constraints of producing and using fossil energy resources, while maintaining their affordability.
Coal pollution mitigation, often called clean coal, is a series of systems and technologies that seek to mitigate the pollution and other environmental effects normally associated with the burning of coal, which is widely regarded as the dirtiest of the common fuels for industrial processes and power generation.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is the process of capturing waste carbon dioxide from large point sources, such as biomass or fossil fuel power plants, transporting it to a storage site, and depositing it where it will not enter the atmosphere, normally an underground geological formation. The aim is to prevent the release of large quantities of CO
2 into the atmosphere. It is a potential means of mitigating the contribution of fossil fuel emissions to global warming and ocean acidification. Although CO
2 has been injected into geological formations for several decades for various purposes, including enhanced oil recovery, the long term storage of CO
2 is a relatively new concept. The first commercial example was the Weyburn-Midale Carbon Dioxide Project in 2000. Another example is SaskPower's Boundary Dam. 'CCS' can also be used to describe the scrubbing of CO
2 from ambient air as a climate engineering technique.
Enhanced oil recovery, also called tertiary recovery, is the extraction of crude oil from an oil field that cannot be extracted otherwise. EOR can extract 30% to 60% or more of a reservoir's oil, compared to 20% to 40% using primary and secondary recovery. According to the US Department of Energy, there are three primary techniques for EOR: thermal, gas injection, and chemical injection. More advanced, speculative EOR techniques are sometimes called quaternary recovery.
Green trading encompasses all forms of environmental financial trading, including carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide (ozone), renewable energy credits, and energy efficiency (negawatts). All these emerging and established environmental financial markets have one thing in common, which is making profits in the emerging emissions offset economy by investing in "clean technology".
Clean coal technology is a collection of technologies being developed in attempts to lessen the negative environmental impact of coal energy generation and to mitigate worldwide climate change. When coal is used as a fuel source, the gaseous emissions generated by the thermal decomposition of the coal include sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), mercury, and other chemical byproducts that vary depending on the type of the coal being used. These emissions have been established to have a negative impact on the environment and human health, contributing to acid rain, lung cancer and cardiovascular disease. As a result, clean coal technologies are being developed to remove or reduce pollutant emissions to the atmosphere. Some of the techniques that would be used to accomplish this include chemically washing minerals and impurities from the coal, gasification (see also IGCC), improved technology for treating flue gases to remove pollutants to increasingly stringent levels and at higher efficiency, carbon capture and storage technologies to capture the carbon dioxide from the flue gas and dewatering lower rank coals (brown coals) to improve the calorific value, and thus the efficiency of the conversion into electricity. Concerns exist regarding the economic viability of these technologies and the timeframe of delivery, potentially high hidden economic costs in terms of social and environmental damage, and the costs and viability of disposing of removed carbon and other toxic matter.
Biochar is charcoal used as a soil amendment. Biochar is a stable solid, rich in carbon, and can endure in soil for thousands of years. Like most charcoal, biochar is made from biomass via pyrolysis. Biochar is under investigation as an approach to carbon sequestration, as it has the potential to help mitigate climate change. It results in processes related to pyrogenic carbon capture and storage (PyCCS). Independently, biochar can increase soil fertility of acidic soils, increase agricultural productivity, and provide protection against some foliar and soil-borne diseases. Regarding the definition from the production part, biochar is defined by the International Biochar Initiative as "The solid material obtained from the thermochemical conversion of biomass in an oxygen-limited environment".
Biomass is plant or animal material used for energy production, heat production, or in various industrial processes as raw material for a range of products. It can be purposely grown energy crops, wood or forest residues, waste from food crops, horticulture, food processing, animal farming, or human waste from sewage plants.
A low-carbon economy (LCE), low-fossil-fuel economy (LFFE), or decarbonised economy is an economy based on low carbon power sources that therefore has a minimal output of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions into the biosphere, but specifically refers to the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. GHG emissions due to anthropogenic (human) activity are the dominant cause of observed global warming since the mid-20th century. Continued emission of greenhouse gases may cause long-lasting changes around the world, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems.
A carbon project refers to a business initiative that receives funding because of the cut the emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) will result. To prove that the project will result in real, permanent, verifiable reductions in Greenhouse Gases, proof must be provided in the form of a project design document and activity reports validated by an approved third party.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Industry (EIA), the United States produced 5.14 billion metric tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2017, the lowest since the early 1990s. From year to year, emissions rise and fall due to changes in the economy, the price of fuel and other factors. The US Environmental Protection Agency attributed recent decreases to a reduction in emissions from fossil fuel combustion, which was a result of multiple factors including switching from coal to natural gas consumption in the electric power sector; warmer winter conditions that reduced demand for heating fuel in the residential and commercial sectors; and a slight decrease in electricity demand.
The milestones for carbon capture and storage show the lack of commercial scale development and implementation of CCS over the years since the first carbon tax was imposed.
Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) refers to a number of technologies of which the objective is the large-scale removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Among such technologies are bio-energy with carbon capture and storage, biochar, ocean fertilization, enhanced weathering, and direct air capture when combined with storage. CDR is a different approach than removing CO
2 from the stack emissions of large fossil fuel point sources, such as power stations. The latter reduces emission to the atmosphere but cannot reduce the amount of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere. As CDR removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, it creates negative emissions, offsetting emissions from small and dispersed point sources such as domestic heating systems, airplanes and vehicle exhausts. It is regarded by some as a form of climate engineering, while other commentators describe it as a form of carbon capture and storage or extreme mitigation. Whether CDR would satisfy common definitions of "climate engineering" or "geoengineering" usually depends upon the scale on which it would be undertaken.
A low-carbon fuel standard (LCFS) is a rule enacted to reduce carbon intensity in transportation fuels as compared to conventional petroleum fuels, such as gasoline and diesel. The most common low-carbon fuels are alternative fuels and cleaner fossil fuels, such as natural gas. The main purpose of a low-carbon fuel standard is to decrease carbon dioxide emissions associated with vehicles powered by various types of internal combustion engines while also considering the entire life cycle, in order to reduce the carbon footprint of transportation.
CarbFix is a process that captures CO2 and other acid gases in water, injects this water into the subsurface where the gases are stored as stable minerals. Work developing this process began in 2007.
Lynn J. Good is chairman of the board, president and chief executive officer of Duke Energy, a Fortune 500 company. Good is an Ohio native and graduated from Miami University where she earned a BS in Systems Analysis and in Accounting (1981).
Carr, T.R., P.M. Rich, and J.D. Bartley. 2007. The NATCARB geoportal: linking distributed data from the Carbon Sequestration Regional Partnerships. Journal of Map and Geography Libraries (Geoscapes), "Special Issue on Department of Energy (DOE) Geospatial Science Innovations". In Press.
