CERI’s startling conclusion drew little public attention. The report was a bulky technical document with a mouthful of a title: Costs for Sequestration of Carbon Dioxide in Western Canadian Geologic Media. It was priced at $5,000 a copy and completed years before anyone except specialists knew what CCS stood for. But the study was distributed to all the institute’s permanent supporters, which finance its work and guide its choices of research topics. The lengthy subscriber roster includes the federal government and agencies of most of the provinces including Alberta, plus corporate heavy hitters contributing to an industry trust fund dedicated to the research institute.

Greenhouse gas streams pure enough to be easily captured and stowed underground are rare, CERI found. Only three per cent of carbon dioxide emissions occur in readily collected concentrations exceeding 50 per cent. Three-quarters of industrial exhaust from fossil fuels comes in thinly diluted flows of 10 per cent to 20 per cent.

CERI reviewed 115 plants with combined total annual carbon dioxide output of 141 million tonnes. The research discovered that there is more than meets the eye even to the most straightforward-looking emissions sites. Most are complexes that need elaborate renovations to make environmental improvements, rather than simple structures that can be changed easily or cheaply.

“Large industrial operations often have several sources of emissions either on the same site or at adjacent sites. There are usually several small sources, such as furnace or compressor stacks, in addition to the large sources on the site. A good example is provided by Nova’s ethylene production complex at Joffre (near Red Deer in central Alberta), where nearly 50 individual stacks emit carbon dioxide. Petrochemical facilities on adjacent sites contribute additional carbon dioxide.”

In the oil sands, greenhouse gas emissions by underground thermal extraction operations occur in elusively diluted concentrations of three per cent to 10 per cent of plant exhaust. Some carbon dioxide streams are a denser nine per cent to 15 per cent at bitumen mining and synthetic oil manufacturing complexes, but the sources are an array of production line elements from pipelines to upgrader plants.

Locking up greenhouse gas in Alberta’s natural underground vaults is expected to be the cheapest part of CCS. Costs are forecast to be $3 to $9 a tonne in depleted natural gas reservoirs and $6 to $9 in tapped-out oilfields. Disposal pipeline expenses are also expected to be reasonable, with shipping tolls averaging $6 per tonne. But CERI estimated that catching emissions at their sources with current methods would cost up to $110 per tonne.

Carbon capture will work to the extent that technology improvements make the system affordable, CERI predicted. With the CCS project partnerships now swinging into action, the Alberta government is betting $2 billion that the fossil fuels industry is capable of environmental breakthroughs.

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