Greenhouse gas can find a home underground
A new study by researchers at MIT shows that there is enough capacity in deep saline aquifers in the United States to store at least a century’s worth of carbon dioxide emissions from the nation’s coal-fired powerplants. Though questions remain about the economics of systems to capture and store such gases, this study addresses a major issue that has overshadowed such proposals.The MIT team’s analysis — led by Ruben Juanes, the ARCO Associate Professor in Energy Studies in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and part of the doctoral thesis work of graduate students Christopher MacMinn PhD ’12 and Michael Szulczewski — is published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.Coal-burning powerplants account for about 40 percent of worldwide carbon emissions, so climate change “will not be addressed unless we address carbon dioxide...