On a few acres of declining natural-gas wells in the southern Rockies, officials with the Colorado Geological Survey are looking to unlock the future of clean energy.
The concept is tantalizingly simple: Bury carbon dioxide underground, where the greenhouse gas can’t contribute to global warming.
Plus, consider the fringe benefit: When the COb is injected into aging oil and gas wells, it helps push the remaining fuel out of its hidden pockets for recovery.
But behind the premise is a complex series of tests that will take at least 12 years to carry out, collecting data and analyzing it.
America’s power industry can hardly wait. With coal-fired power plants producing the majority of the nation’s carbon emissions, electric companies are under increasing pressure to deal with their carbon pollution.
Many analysts believe the federal government will create a cap and tax on power-plant carbon emissions.
A new breed of power plant can convert coal to a cleaner-burning gas and, in the process, capture carbon dioxide before it is emitted through smokestacks. In theory, the carbon can then be buried, or “sequestered,” in industry parlance. Some of the new coal gasification plants have been built, yet none have tried burying their carbon emissions.
“All responsible fossil energy companies recognize that carbon dioxide emissions need to be reduced or eliminated,” said Dag Nummedal, director of the Colorado Energy Research Institute at the Colorado School of Mines. “Sequestering carbon is a key to solving the problem.”
Despite the promise of disposing of carbon dioxide, the notion has divided the environmental community. Some worry that buried carbon dioxide could leak and that the untested technology is delaying a needed conversion to renewable energy in place of coal. Others believe it’s the ultimate solution for coal-fired power.
“It’s an exciting idea,” said petroleum engineer Genevieve Young of the Colorado Geo logical Survey, one of the lead agencies in the Southwest Regional Partnership on COb Sequestration.
The regional group is one of several across the nation commissioned by the U.S. Energy Department’s National Energy Technology Laboratory to find sites for carbon burial and measure its effectiveness.
The regional group this year will begin three test sequestration projects – one in the San Juan basin of New Mexico, just across the Colorado border; one in the Paradox basin of Utah, also just across the Colorado border; and one in the Permian basin of Texas.
In addition to oil and gas wells, coal beds and underground caverns, sites for sequestration include deep saline aquifers whose water isn’t suitable for consumption.
The amount of carbon to be buried in the test projects is small compared with total carbon emissions in Colorado.
For example, in the San Juan project, 75,000 tons of COb will be injected, the equivalent of removing 15,000 cars from the road for one year. Total carbon emissions in Colorado are more than 86 million tons a year and projected to grow to 127 million tons by 2025.
Ironically, the sequestration tests will use carbon dioxide pumped from naturally occurring underground formations, which the energy industry uses for enhanced recovery of oil and gas.
The San Juan test project will take place in a declining coal-bed methane field operated by ConocoPhillips.
“We want to better understand the enhanced (energy) recovery techniques and sequestration,” said spokesman Jim Lowry. “It’s a promising new technology that might help our business.”
BP, another major natural-gas producer in the San Juan basin, isn’t participating in the test but will be closely watching the outcome.
If the tests prove effective, a consortium of utility companies, energy producers, scientists and government agencies are expected to collaborate on collecting carbon emissions from power plants for underground burial.
Officials with the Colorado Geological Survey said the prospect of recovering stray oil and gas from declining fields is almost as enticing as solving the carbon-emissions problem.
The agency has calculated that carbon dioxide-enhanced recovery in Colorado’s major natural gas formations could produce as much as 30 trillion cubic feet of gas – equivalent to 30 years of current annual production.
Enhanced recovery is not a new technique. It has been used for decades at the Rangely oil field in northwest Colorado.
The difference in the new test program is that instead of injecting COb and forgetting about it after the energy is recovered, it will be closely monitored and measured to see whether it remains in the underground formations or leaches out horizontally or toward the surface.
Those issues worry Jeff Goodell, the New York-based author of “Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future.”
“There are problems with potential leakage of carbon dioxide,” he said. “There is the possibility of eruptions or of COb asphyxiation. The idea that this is some kind of magic bullet for (coal-fired power) is completely false.”
Boulder entrepreneur and environmental activist Dan Friedlander said the potential benefits and drawbacks of carbon sequestration make for a tough analysis.
“If there’s a chance that sequestration can be done cost-effectively, it will be good to have some parameters on how it works and where it works,” he said. “But there’s also a concern. It could encourage development of more coal-gasification power plants during a period when we really don’t yet know if the technology works.”
Staff writer Steve Raabe can be reached at 303-954-1948 or sraabe@denverpost.com.
