The
BBC is reporting today that a team of US scientists have laid out an effective plan for storing enormous quantities of carbon under the sea-bed that they say is safe and that there is "enough space for almost unlimited carbon emissions."
The proposals involve pumping the gas miles underground then injecting it under the sea floor. There is enough space for almost unlimited carbon emissions, a US team reports in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The scientists claim that their plan is different than previous proposals that had been seen as controversial and potentially hazardous for marine life. They claim that storing carbon at depths of near 3000 meters under the surface of the ocean, beneath the sea-bed would allow high levels of pressure and low temperatures to ensure that the carbon remains there indefinitely.
"Deep-sea sediments at high pressure and low temperature provide a virtually unlimited and permanent reservoir for carbon dioxide captured from fossil fuel combustion," they write in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The storage capacity is enormous, they add. In the US alone, annual emissions of carbon dioxide could be contained in just 80 square kilometres (31 square miles) of seafloor.
I haven't been following these sorts of proposals, and I know there are many here who are way more knowledgeable on the subject, but this seems to me, at face value, to be potentially significant. If what they are saying works, virtually all extraneous carbon emissions could be stored permanently and the amount stored possibly would be limitless, or at least hopefully until alternate, non-carbon energy forms are in use.
I don't know if this will be a big development or a planet-saving solution, but hopefully more attention will be given and more information is made. The team says that the technology is already available. Normally, I'd be hesitant to go ahead with a plan like this with such little time-tested support, but abating the rising global temperatures is such an immediate necessity that this may be worth trying. It could help the global warming crisis but, of course, the energy crisis would still loom. I say take one step at a time.