Twenty years ago, on this day, February 17th, 2004, CCS hype really got going.
JUDGING by the heavy hitters attending a conference on the Gold Coast this week, geosequestration is about to get a substantial workover in Australia in the next few years.
Geosequestration is the capture of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and placing them underground. To some environmentalists the concept is about as popular as toxic waste.
For Australia’s biggest export industry, coal, geosequestration may be the difference between death and survival.
Wilson, N. 2004 Turning coal clean and green. The Australian, February 21
https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id:%22media/pressrel/0ROB6%22
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 378ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that from about 1999/2000 oil and gas companies and their crumb maidens had started being enthusiastic about technology, especially carbon capture and storage as a way of legitimising the ongoing digging up transporting, selling and burning of thermal coal. This was especially important for Queensland and New South Wales (Victoria’s brown coal is unexportable).
What we learn is that you can wave a new technology, however implausible under people’s noses, and they’ll come trotting, squealing with delight, thinking that there’ll be another trough for them to stick their snouts in. The song remains the same.
What happened next, the promises around CCS kept going until 2009/10. Reality intervened, physics intervened, economics intervened. The whole promise thing went away again. And then came back 10 years later, because, well… what else has the fossil fuel industry got?
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Also on this day:
February 17, 1993 – President Clinton proposes an Energy Tax.
February 17, 2003 – Bob Carr says John Howard showing poor leadership (too generous!)
Feb 17, 2013 – Scientists, activists, actors, arrested outside Whitehouse, protesting #Keystone
February 17, 2013 – celebrities arrested at Whitehouse, protesting Keystone XL