Carbon sequestration may be pointless

Governments, particularly those Governments of nations which have significant coal power stations, have taken refuge in the concept of “clean coal” imagining fondly that someone will invent a technology which can sequestrate carbon dioxide from coal burning power stations.

You can certainly wash smoke, removing many of the more dangerous particulates and waste, and all smoke producing power stations should have this technology because doing so would improve public health. I have yet to see a technology that removes all the carbon dioxide without significantly increasing the use  of fuel. Perhaps someone can point me in the direction of such proven technology.

So I assume there is not such thing as clean coal, although there may be one day in the distant future or even in a far off universe.

Unfortunately, you cannot base a climate change policy upon a concept that has not yet turned into a technology; it is the kind of nonsensical thinking from government which litters proper anti-climate change measures.

The old Labour Government was full of this kind of thinking about sequestration of carbon dioxide; indeed at one time they supported a proposal to build a new coal power plant at Kingsnorth on the strength of “clean coal” being available at some time in the not too different future.

Gary Schaffer, who is a professor at the Danish Centre for Earth System Science in Humlebaek, Denmark writing in Nature Geoscience has pointed out that even if we get the carbon dioxide sequestration technology right there are potential problems which he can foresee over the long term. His studies indicate that global warming will be delayed but sequestration will likely result in oxygen depletion and acidification of the oceans and higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in the oceans.

He believes that deep ocean sequestration ends up, over a time period of a few thousands years with so much leakage that the planet will be back to where it started, with fast global warming. If you could cut down the leakage from stored carbon dioxide to 1% of the store per thousand years of store sequestration provides the same carbon dioxide reduction as using proven technology, such as thermal solar panels, photovoltaics or wind.

One per cent leakage per thousand years will probably take a great deal of carbon intensive maintenance to achieve, however and where ever the carbon dioxide is stored.

If Professor Schaffer is right in his calculations carbon sequestration is pointless when there are better and cheaper alternatives available.