An environmentalist, an oilman, a politician, a journalist and a rock star walk into a bar…

If Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology was a rock star, just what kind of rock star would it be… a notorious rock star or a renowned rock star? Will CCS be famous for being famous, a feat that often draws sneers from the musical elite, or will it stand the test of time and go down in the books as “the real deal”?

This year, FLOW has been following the CCS debate while the technology continues to make rock star status among industry, major politicians and media in North America. Since we labour under the assumption that the rock star is an apt analogy as the technology deals with underground rock formations, we’d like to explore this question further.

As a preamble, CCS is defined by the Alberta Government as “capturing carbon dioxide emissions from industrial sources and transporting them by pipeline to sites where they are injected into deep rock formations for permanent storage.” CCS technology can also be used for Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) where CO2 is pumped underground and used as a solvent to lessen the viscosity of the oil, allowing it to flow more freely from hard-to-reach places.

In a January FLOW article we explored the different sides of the CCS debate and discovered a range of different attitudes towards CCS that changed markedly from profession to profession. We noticed that environmental groups in particular are hesitant to buy the T-shirt.

“It’s an unproven technology,” said Jeh Custer, Northwestern Energy Campaigner with the Sierra Club. “To think that we’re going to take carbon and put it under the ground and it will be there for hundreds or thousands of years seems overly reliant on technological solutions.”

Industry players, of course, are singing a different tune. And who could blame them? CCS technology represents a means to curb greenhouse gases without cutting down production. It could be used for oil sands, fertilizer production, coal plants, multiple emitters, single emission sources, you name it.

Politicians, as of late, seem to be big fans of CCS. Soon after Barack Obama’s visit with Stephen Harper in February, Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt came to Calgary to announce $140 million in funding going to eight CCS projects in Western Canada. In a March FLOW article, these eight projects represented a microcosm of the greater CCS puzzle in which various facets of the technology are applied in different situations and on a commercial scale. Among Raitt’s glowing reviews of CCS, the Minister said, “I don’t think it’s possible to overstate the importance of this technology… We can’t turn our backs on the energy and the wealth that our fossil fuels generate, but we have the responsibility to make sure it is generated sustainably.”

So judging by environmentalists, we’re dealing with a notorious rock star – famous in an unfavourable light. Judging by politicians and industry players, CCS rocks.

But what about media?

Media have clearly had some mixed views about it. The best way to capture this is through an example of two different media outlets covering the same CCS story.

A paper published in the April 2 issue of journal Nature revealed the findings of a study in which scientists observed nine gas fields that had been naturally filled with carbon dioxide millions of years ago. The study was meant to see how long the natural CO2 had been there. Of course, the crux of the CCS argument is the assumption that CO2, once pumped underground, will stay there forever.

Article A was entitled ‘Greenhouse gases stay buried for millions of years, say scientists’. OK, so far so good. Article B was entitled ‘Nature’s underground carbon stores aren’t rock solid’. Sounds like a pretty mixed bag of attitudes towards our rock star.

While we’re on the topic, we might as well explore what each outlet had to say about the study. The first article suggests the new research may present “the strongest case yet for an emerging technology.” The article briefly mentions CCS skeptics’ concern about its long-term environmental effects, and then outlines the results, saying, “they found the gases have stayed in underground pools of water for eons.” The article also touts the research as “being hailed as the first study to actually show how carbon dioxide is stored in natural-gas fields.”

Article B, on the other hand, essentially demotes the “rock” in our rock star to just a bunch of fizzy water. It means that, since CO2 is more readily absorbed by water than rock, it could eventually leak to the surface as water sometimes does.

Werner Aeschbach-Hertig, Heidelberg University researcher is quoted in the article as saying, “Clearly, mineral trapping is the preferable pathway, as it promises to store the carbon over geological time scales.”

So much for storage.

But maybe we shouldn’t jump to such quick conclusions. If you think about it, the concept of storing natural gas is a proven technology. For decades companies have been pulling natural gas from the ground and putting it back for storage when prices and demand go down. Natural gas is similar to CO2, so who’s to say the same scenario wouldn’t work in a carbon sequestration context?

Granted, Article B does dedicate a few paragraphs to show how these findings do not necessarily mean the end for CCS. “CO2 has been stored in these fields, in some cases, for millions of years,” said the study’s co-author, Sherwood Lollar, in the article. “So obviously, the very fact that it’s dissolved in water doesn’t necessarily mean it’s any less effective a storage mechanism than mineral precipitation.”

So we went from rock to water, but at the end of the day is CCS technology all just a bunch of hot air? This actually leads us to the most important question one should ask if we are going to compare CCS to a rock star. Is it a talented rock star? Meaning, is it good at what it purports to do?

Unfortunately, we can’t answer that question until we give this technology the time, money and resources for research. As far as using CO2 for enhanced oil recovery, this is a known and proven technology, as exemplified by the Weyburn-Midale CO2 Project in southeastern Saskatchewan.

As far as getting the CO2 to sit underground and stay put, there is ample evidence that suggests it can be done but we’ll never truly know unless we try.

And that’s precisely the point for all CCS advocates. Even the rock star could tell you, practice makes perfect.