As if the development and implementation of carbon capture did not face enough hurdles, both technical and financial, we can now add another barrier to the list.
This time it is NIMBY, or the "not in my back yard" syndrome.
As with many other industrial projects that might serve the common good but not the local interests, a carbon capture project has met a fate similar to that of proposed power plants and waste disposal sites.
Protesters in the Netherlands have shut down a proposed carbon capture demonstration project that had been funded and developed by the Shell Oil Company.
The project underwritten by Shell to inject 400,000 metric tons of compressed carbon dioxide annually into a depleted natural gas bed is now officially dead.
The problem is NIMBY.
The proposed location for sequestering the carbon dioxide was located about a mile underneath a shopping mall in the town of Barendrecht.
Dutch Minister of Economic Affairs Maxine Verhagen, in a quintessential piece of political wordsmithing, described the reason for the termination of the project as due to a "complete lack of local support.
" That is certainly true.
Residents of Barendrecht have been strongly opposed to the carbon capture and storage project since its inception.
In fact, the Barendrecht project has been called a poster child for opposition to carbon capture and storage.
But the opposition is strictly local.
Most Dutch citizens are in favor of carbon capture and storage if it is carried out somewhere else.
And secure geological formations such as depleted oil and gas wells have been proposed as some of the best locations for injecting the large quantities of carbon dioxide that must be sequestered if carbon capture and storage is to have any meaningful impact in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
But in the case of Barendrecht, the NIMBY factor was simply too great an obstacle to overcome.
Cost, of course, is another issue.
Requiring that carbon dioxide be scrubbed from the exhaust gases of power plants will raise the cost of power significantly.
Estimates are that the burden of carbon capture will add about 30-40% to the cost of power, and consumers are not enthralled with the idea of bearing that expense in the form of higher rates for electricity.
But without a cost for carbon, there is no incentive for carbon capture technology to be implemented.
This leaves open the question of where and when carbon capture and storage technology will be demonstrated.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has proposed that carbon capture and storage should contribute about 20% of the necessary reductions in the emissions of greenhouse gases, but without any economic driving force to encourage companies to implement technology for capturing and storing CO2, the only fallback appears to be government grants and incentives to fund the projects that would prove the viability of the technology.
That will put already stretched taxpayers on the hook for the billions of dollars of investment required.
This time it is NIMBY, or the "not in my back yard" syndrome.
As with many other industrial projects that might serve the common good but not the local interests, a carbon capture project has met a fate similar to that of proposed power plants and waste disposal sites.
Protesters in the Netherlands have shut down a proposed carbon capture demonstration project that had been funded and developed by the Shell Oil Company.
The project underwritten by Shell to inject 400,000 metric tons of compressed carbon dioxide annually into a depleted natural gas bed is now officially dead.
The problem is NIMBY.
The proposed location for sequestering the carbon dioxide was located about a mile underneath a shopping mall in the town of Barendrecht.
Dutch Minister of Economic Affairs Maxine Verhagen, in a quintessential piece of political wordsmithing, described the reason for the termination of the project as due to a "complete lack of local support.
" That is certainly true.
Residents of Barendrecht have been strongly opposed to the carbon capture and storage project since its inception.
In fact, the Barendrecht project has been called a poster child for opposition to carbon capture and storage.
But the opposition is strictly local.
Most Dutch citizens are in favor of carbon capture and storage if it is carried out somewhere else.
And secure geological formations such as depleted oil and gas wells have been proposed as some of the best locations for injecting the large quantities of carbon dioxide that must be sequestered if carbon capture and storage is to have any meaningful impact in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
But in the case of Barendrecht, the NIMBY factor was simply too great an obstacle to overcome.
Cost, of course, is another issue.
Requiring that carbon dioxide be scrubbed from the exhaust gases of power plants will raise the cost of power significantly.
Estimates are that the burden of carbon capture will add about 30-40% to the cost of power, and consumers are not enthralled with the idea of bearing that expense in the form of higher rates for electricity.
But without a cost for carbon, there is no incentive for carbon capture technology to be implemented.
This leaves open the question of where and when carbon capture and storage technology will be demonstrated.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has proposed that carbon capture and storage should contribute about 20% of the necessary reductions in the emissions of greenhouse gases, but without any economic driving force to encourage companies to implement technology for capturing and storing CO2, the only fallback appears to be government grants and incentives to fund the projects that would prove the viability of the technology.
That will put already stretched taxpayers on the hook for the billions of dollars of investment required.
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