The Lohafex Project
All you have to do most days is open the newspaper or turn on the television to hear about how we are damaging our planet, causing global warming, by the excessive amounts of carbon dioxide that our modern lifestyles produce. Making the headlines this week, however, was a controversial scientific experiment that aims to speed up certain eco-systems in order to absorb some of the excess carbon dioxide we create.
The plan of the scheme was to deposit a vast amount of iron particles in to the ocean, in the hope that these particles would speed up the growth of algae which is known to absorb carbon dioxide.
This experiment was not to solve the problem of how much carbon dioxide we produce, instead it aimed to fix the consequence of reliance on fossil fuels; excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which leads to global warming. Previous research has shown that adding iron particles to bodies of water increases the amount of plankton within the water. In turn the algae would absorb carbon dioxide from the air, and when the algae died it sunk to the bottom of the sea floor. This would effectively trap the excess carbon dioxide from the air at the bottom of the ocean; in effect it would be putting the carbon 'back where it came from'.
The Lohafex Project conducted the biggest ever investigation in to the process of adding iron particles to the ocean, or 'ocean fertilisation' as it is known. The company put six tonnes of iron in to the Southern Ocean but, unfortunately, results were, at best, modest. There was a minimal increase in the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed, a result which obviously disappointed scientists.
Two weeks after the iron was added to the ocean there was indeed a significant increase in the growth of plankton, this was then, however, eaten by copepods that were in turn eaten by amphipods (which are a larger type of crustacean). This experiment has therefore shown that the eco-system within the Southern Ocean is not the correct environment for this type of ocean fertilisation.
The failure of this experiment is great news for Greenpeace who, from the beginning, have campaigned against the use of iron being added to oceanic eco-systems, arguing that adding extra iron to the oceans was tantamount to pollution.
Greenpeace are concerned not only with the principles behind the project, but also with the fast increasing expanses of water in which these experiments are taking place. Their concerns range from the immediate environmental impact of these experiments being conducted on an ever increasing scale to what the reliance on projects such as these has to say about our views on Climate Change and the way in which we tackle the problem of our reliance on carbon creating fuels.
Campaigners argue that if we are to rely on climate mitigation strategies such as this then we are looking at a future where we have to manipulate the ocean, and the environment, on a truly magnificent scale in order to compensate for our initial pollution of the planet.
Yet the companies and bodies who support ocean fertilisation maintain that, despite the failings on this experiment, that this science could be the key to removing excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, if the conditions are right within the waters.
I see the main danger in this being the possibility that if this science does work that we will become complacent and no longer see the need to reduce our carbon emissions; and that could be extremely dangerous.
Going Underground
In this edition of The Green Issue our focus has been on resolving the issue of the excess amounts of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere as a means to reduce the huge impact we as a species are having on the rising climate of the planet. With the recent failure of the Lohafex project that was hoping to capture carbon from the atmosphere and trap it within plant life which would then sink to the bottom of the ocean and be safely trapped on the sea bed. But is there another way to employ a similar principle of carbon capture to stop the impact greenhouse gases are having on climate change? And should we be investing in such projects rather than tackling the root cause of the problem?
Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) employs the principle that if carbon dioxide is trapped and buried deep underground then this could offer a real, and viable, solution to the problem of climate change. This process aims to trap the carbon released by power stations which burn fossil fuels, at the source of the pollution. The aim would then be to bury the carbon dioxide deep underground, thus not allowing it to travel in to the atmosphere and contribute to global warming.
There are two principle, and obvious, practicable problems with carbon capture and sequestration. Primarily there is the practical element of how you can actually capture the polluting gases as their source, and the second being the problem of how to ensure all of the captured pollutants remain underground and do not leak in to the atmosphere, which would increase the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and contribute significantly to global warming.
As well as these tangible problems there is also a similar issue with CCS as we looked at in the current affairs article regarding the Lohafex Project. Investing time, money and resources in solving the problem of carbon dioxide created by power stations does little to counter our reliance on fossil fuels as a means of energy. Whilst carbon capture seems a good solution to the vast amount of fossil fuels created by our use of coal, oil and gas in order to create energy it does not solve the actual problem; that we rely too heavily on an ultimately limited resource that is damaging to the environment in many, many ways.
The problem that is most easily solved is the concern about how to ensure all of the carbon dioxide does not leak out of the ground and then contribute to global warming. Scientists have studied natural underground reserves of gas, and have found that carbon dioxide that has been trapped underground has been stable, possibly for millions of years, as it dissolves harmlessly in to subterranean water reserves which do not appear to have leaked any significant amounts of carbon dioxide back in to the atmosphere.
These results have led scientists to believe that it would be possible to inject large amounts of carbon dioxide in to underground reservoirs where it will dissolve in water reserves and be safely held for at least as long as it takes for our planet to solve the reliance on fossil fuels and instead use 100% clean methods to generate energy. This is directly due to the previously mentioned research:
as natural gas has been stored safely for millions of years it should be possible for man-made gases to be stored in a similar vain. The principle behind capturing carbon dioxide underground is the same as that for capturing carbon dioxide in the sea; when the carbon dioxide mixes with the water it becomes heavier than normal water and therefore sinks to the bottom of the water reserve where it remains for millions of years, as natural oil and gas were formed and stored.
Whilst this research suggests that any emissions produced while we are searching for cleaner alternatives could be safely stored underground thus reducing the amount of greenhouse gases and hopefully slowing down the speed of global warming, this technology would require vast amounts of money, time and science in order to develop it to a workable level, and perhaps this money and energy would be better spent, instead, speeding up our journey towards clean energy.
Even if significant amounts of time and energy were spent on the process of keeping carbon dioxide in the ground the problem still remains as to how to get it there in the first place.
Capturing carbon
to then put in to the ground is a tricky problem to which no one has yet found once clear solution.
While there are projects around the world that use carbon capture, there are currently no power stations that use carbon capture and sequestration to diminish the amount of carbon dioxide released in to the atmosphere following the combustion of coal for electricity production.
Capturing the carbon dioxide produced by power stations to then store it underground would be
expensive in the short term and this is perhaps why we are yet to see a power station using this technology. As pure carbon dioxide is not produced by the burning of fossil fuels that waste would have to be 'stripped' so as to be sure that only pure carbon dioxide would be injected in to the ground (a process which in itself would prove expensive and difficult).
Whilst the thinking behind carbon capture and sequestration is admirable it does seem like a way to diminish our responsibility for the amount of carbon dioxide that we produce die to our reliance on fossil fuel. Meddling with the natural earth mass and carbon sink could have long term consequences that we do not yet know about. We could very well be solving one problem only to create another. The time, money and energy that it would take to put carbon capture and sequestration in to practice would, perhaps, be better invested in creating reliable, effective and efficient energy sources not only for ourselves but also for future generations.
