New plan to force greenhouse gases underground

Tuesday, 5 June 2001

for: World Environment Day

A major proportion of greenhouse gases may be pumped underground if a new national research program involving Adelaide University is successful.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are not only caused by fuel consumption, they are also a byproduct of petroleum production at oil and gas fields, adding to the global greenhouse problem.

Now a $1 million study at Adelaide's National Centre For Petroleum Geology & Geophysics (NCPGG) is investigating ways of removing those emissions by injecting the CO2 back into the ground where it came from.

The work puts the centre, based at the University's Thebarton Campus, at the international forefront of greenhouse research. It is hailed as one of the most practical, environmentally sustainable and economically feasible solutions to the world wide greenhouse gas problem.

"This technology has the potential to make a substantial difference to global greenhouse emissions," says the coordinator of the project in Adelaide, Associate Professor Simon Lang.

"Greenhouse gas emissions are expected to lead to global warming of between 2-4 degrees Celsius on average over the next century. Even if we make major reductions to emissions, global warming will still occur but at a lesser rate. Finding solutions to reduce the emissions is vital if we are to avoid potentially destructive climate change," he says.

Technology for removing huge quantities of emissions in "CO2 sinks", as they're called, is currently being developed and trialled in Norway. However, Dr Lang says Australia is leading the way in this research.

"We're investigating the means by which this can be done safely and in sufficient quantities to dwarf other available methods. This may prove to be one of the only ways of reducing emissions at a great enough rate."

The outcomes, if successful, would complement other methods of greenhouse gas reduction, such as tree planting, improved energy efficiencies, reduction in the use of coal as an energy source, and shifting to new gas and fuel cell technologies.

"The idea is to find places where we could store hundreds of millions of tonnes of CO2 injected at high rates for many years, and it appears that Australia has several sites where this may be feasible both technically and economically," Dr Lang says.

The research program is funded by the Australian Petroleum Cooperative Research Centre with substantial industry support.

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