As the severity of the global CO2 problem gradually is becoming clear to everybody, decisions will have to be made concerning permitting of carbon storage projects. Fossil fuel based power plants can produce energy at competitive prices with other energy sources even if equipped with capture facilities. Thus, the fossil fuel industry is ready to implement carbon capture and storage (CCS) once a CO2 tax regime or its equivalent is introduced. Questions associated with accounting for leaky storage reservoirs over millennial time scales in a carbon credit regime and estimating impacts of CO2 on climate and ocean ecosystems will then have to be addressed in order to estimate the benefits and possible damage from any given storage project. Available environmental models for such questions have only limited validation data but are foreseen to play a key role, and acquisition of required site specific data may be costly. Experience from the past 15 years of research on CO2 storage options and the associated science — policy interface suggests that uncertain models tend to be trusted too much by policy makers. In some cases, good intentions for environmental protection lead to a compartmentalized approach that is unsuitable for global problems where tradeoffs may be inevitable. In conclusion, the likelihood of poor environmental management decisions on carbon storage is large and the actual need for alternative solutions to the CO2 problem is larger than proponents of CCS may like to think.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Haugan, P.M., 2002. On the production and use of scientific knowledge about ocean sequestration. Essay presented at the 6th International Conference on Greenhouse Gas Control Technologies, Kyoto, 2002. In J. Gale and Y. Kaya (Eds) Proceedings, Elsevier Science, Amsterdam.
Haugan, P.M. and F. Joos 2004. Metrics to assess the mitigation of global warming by carbon capture and storage in the ocean and in geological reservoirs. Geophysical Research Letters 31, L18202, doi:10.1029/2004GL020295.
Haugan, P.M. and H. Drange 1992. Sequestration of CO2 in the deep ocean by shallow injection. Nature 357, 318–320.
Haugan, P.M. and H. Drange 1996. Effects of CO2 on the ocean environment. Energy Conservation and Management 37(6–8), 1019–1022.
Haugan, P.M., C. Turley, and H.-O. Poertner 2006. Ocean acidification resulting from elevated levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, DN-utredning 2006-1, 32 pp. Norwegian Directorate for Nature Management, Trondheim, Norway.
House, K.Z., D.P. Schrag, C.F. Harvey, and K.S. Lackner (2006). Permanent carbon dioxide storage in deep-sea sediments. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 103(33), 12291–12295.
IPCC, 2005. IPCC Special Report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage. Prepared by Working Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Metz, B., O. Davidson, H. C. de Coninck, M. Loos, and L. A. Meyer (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, 442 pp. ISBN-13 978-0-521-86643-9.
Kaya, Y., 1995. The role of CO2 removal and disposal. Energy Conversion and Management 36(6–9), 375–380.
Marchetti, C., 1977. On geoengineering and the CO2 problem. Climate Change 1(1), 59–68.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2009 Springer Science + Business Media B.V
About this paper
Cite this paper
Haugan, P.M. (2009). Communicating scientific uncertainty for decision making about CO2 storage. In: Baveye, P.C., Laba, M., Mysiak, J. (eds) Uncertainties in Environmental Modelling and Consequences for Policy Making. NATO Science for Peace and Security Series C: Environmental Security. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2636-1_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2636-1_11
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-2635-4
Online ISBN: 978-90-481-2636-1
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)