this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2023
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Underground carbon storage is the future in Canada. But could it cause earthquakes? (www.cbc.ca)
submitted 2 years ago by grte@lemmy.ca to c/canada@lemmy.ca
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[–] grte@lemmy.ca 46 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Carbon capture is absolutely not the future in Canada, much as our elected officials may wish it so. It is a waste of time and money, subsidized reputation laundering for a powerful industry.

[–] jadero@lemmy.ca 9 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I've never understood carbon capture and storage. I never went past high school and that was about 50 years ago. But I still remember the key principles behind why perpetual motion will never be a thing.

Unless there is an energy producing reaction that binds CO2 or separates the carbon from the oxygen without producing nasty byproducts, carbon capture and storage cannot work without pouring more energy into the project than what we gained from the release of the CO2.

Just imagine what anything else looks like. For every fossil fueled power plant that has ever existed, we need to build at least one larger non-carbon plant to power the capture and storage. There are several ways to reduce the fraction of our power that goes into capture and storage:

  • Take more time to remove than it took to add
  • Remove less than we added
  • Find a less energy intensive method of binding the CO2 (that is we don't need to turn the CO2 back into a fuel; is creating calcium carbonate an option?)

But no matter how you slice it, removing enough quickly enough will still require a large fraction of our power generation capacity.

The initiatives cannot be anything other than a shell game designed to hide the underlying perpetual motion machine.

[–] Dearche@lemmy.ca 12 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Theoretically carbon capture can work, but just like you said, it takes additional energy to capture carbon, and that amount is more than what it takes to produce the needed electricity if you're using a carbon based energy source.

That said, if you go for something like nuclear, than you do get a clean source of energy that can be used to capture existing carbon. But we're already at the point where our energy infrastructure is inadequate for just electrifying what we currently have, and in a few years the Pickering plant is going to have to shut down due to being so old (though apparently the government is trying to delay it as there's no plans for building a new plant of any sort to replace the Pickering plant).

So even in the best case scenario, it'll be more than a decade before any sort of large scale carbon capture scheme can even be started, as that's how long it'll take to build enough new plants to cover existing demand, let alone accounting for future demand.

[–] jadero@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 years ago

I should have clarified that I know it can work, but not as the perpetual motion kind of system most people seem to envisage or that most projects I'm aware of seem to promote.

Everyone seems to think that carbon capture can be this little add-on when it actually needs to be a bare minimum of 1/3 our total energy production to have a meaningful impact over typical human time scales (a century or 2). Making things more complicated, none of that carbon capture energy can come from carbon fuels. I just don't see how we can do both at the same time, except as research projects to set the stage for when have gone a lot further in decarbonising our production for consumption.

[–] VieuxQueb@lemmy.ca -5 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I hate the term clean energy for nuclear ! It is not clean energy ! Where do you put the waste ? If it's so clean I guess you dont mind if we use YOUR backyard to put the waste ?

[–] Rodeo@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 years ago

The don't ever say clean anything ever again.

Manufacturing ANYTHING generates waste. By this logic nothing is clean.

[–] Dearche@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 years ago

Yes, a few tons of high level nuclear waste from every reactor ever made each year is comparable to covering an entire farm for old windmill blades and burnt out solar panels aren't comparable. Especially since nuclear waste can easily be recycled into new fuel while supposed "green energy" waste can't.

[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It's a delaying tactic to try and slow the coming effects while we get a better idea.

[–] jadero@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 years ago

I'm not sure how it works as a delaying tactic when the energy requirements of anything meaningful just delay migrating our grid, heating, and transportation off of fossil fuels.

By all means, divert some our energy into research projects, but I don't think we can expect to be in a position to do meaningful capture and storage for 2 or 3 decades.

[–] howrar@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Depends on how you do the capture. If you need to engineer the system and feed it energy in a form that we can instead use to power other stuff, then yeah, it doesn't make sense. But if you for example, plant a tree, then that tree would use energy from the sun that you wouldn't otherwise be able to use as easily.

[–] frostbiker@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 years ago

The carbon captured by the tree will be released when it eventually rots or burns. That's why it's called the "carbon cycle".

If you want to reduce carbon in our atmosphere, you need to capture and store that carbon in a way that won't be released again for thousands of years or more.

[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 3 points 2 years ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Kao and his team will be monitoring earthquake activity from underground carbon storage facilities over five years, studying the possible effects of the injections and analyzing what can be done to mitigate or eliminate those risks.

"This is an important issue because if the induced earthquakes happen to be a significant one that actually becomes large enough for the local communities to feel it or even have some damage … then the regulatory agencies will have to shut the injection operation down."

Earthquakes caused by injecting a liquid underground — also known as induced seismicity — have been well documented in the U.S. and Canada when it comes to fracking and wastewater disposal, including by Kao in B.C.

If a major earthquake ruptures through cap rock atop of a carbon storage area, it could create a pathway for injected CO2 to escape, he said.

Erik Nickel is the chief operating officer of the Petroleum Technology Research Centre, which oversees the Aquistore carbon storage facility in Estevan, Sask.

"It would make a lot of sense to include us in there because of our history of not really having much seismic activity," Nickel said, adding the site sits on flatlands and is not near the boundary of tectonic plates.

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