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Canadian industry and federal and provincial governments propose that carbon capture and storage (also known as CCS) represents a major tool to meet their emission-reduction goals — but we’re far from understanding the health and safety implications of scaling up this unproven technology.
CCS involves siphoning off carbon dioxide (CO2) from its source, then rendering it liquid, moving it by underground pipeline, and finally injecting it deep underground in perpetuity. Pathways Alliance, representing six of Canada’s largest oil companies, proposes to pipe CO2 from up to 20 oil and gas facilities across 400 km to a geological reservoir under Alberta’s Lakeland district. This district is home to numerous communities (St. Paul, Cold Lake, Bonnyville), many farms, and eight First Nation reserves.
But can we be confident that CCS can deliver safe, permanent carbon sequestration? Let’s look at what is known about the environmental, health, and safety risks of the capture, transportation, and storage of CO2.
CO2 is an invisible, odourless gas that normally comprises about 0.04 per cent of the air we breathe. CO2 at high concentrations (17 to 30 per cent) can asphyxiate a living being in minutes. Lesser concentrations can cause headache, shortness of breath, dizziness, confusion, and hearing and visual impairment. People with underlying medical conditions are most vulnerable. The greatest CO2 emission disaster occurred in Cameroon in 1986, as a result of a massive natural release from a volcanic lake; it killed about 1,700 people and thousands of animals.
CCS projects and pipelines can fail and cause injury to people and the environment. In a CO2 pipeline rupture near a village in Mississippi in 2020, 45 people had to be hospitalized, and more than 200 needed evacuation. Because it is heavier than air, the CO2 clouds stayed low and stalled the combustion engines of first responders. Though no one died in that CO2 poisoning event, many victims reported long-term respiratory and neurological problems. In the USA alone, at least 75 other CO2 pipeline incidents have been reported since 2010.
The Pathways Alliance CCS plan envisions its pipeline routes and storage on both private and public land. Storage sites would require close monitoring — forever. The technology for CCS storage and monitoring, especially for the long term, is immature, and research on risks to human health and safety is limited.
However, the practice of injecting fluids deep underground is an established source of induced earthquakes which can cause structural and environmental damage. CO2 in aquifers may leach heavy metals into drinking water; this past May, a CCS project in Australia was nixed due to this risk.
Injected CO2 can and has seeped to the surface, either through natural faults, or through inadequately capped wells, common in storage areas. A high school in Wyoming had to be closed for most of the school year due to such a leak.
The industrial process of CCS requires energy, producing more emissions and thus contributes to climate change. Although CCS is presented as a technological solution to mitigate climate change, it risks becoming a distraction from the urgent need to reduce emissions at their source.
CCS gives permission to polluters to continue operating as usual, perpetuating reliance on fossil fuels rather than transitioning to cleaner alternatives and improving energy efficiency.
Despite the risks, the Alberta government and the Alberta Energy Regulator have denied the request for an environmental impact assessment made by the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and by environmental groups.
In an interview at COP 29, ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods agreed that we need to decrease our greenhouse gas emissions. Canada has committed to attaining net-zero emissions by 2050. In Alberta, the oil and gas sector is the largest source of emissions, and the sector is growing. Yes, Mr. Woods, it is imperative that we reduce emissions, but can we count on CCS to safely do the job? Relying on CCS to address emissions may lock industries into decades of pollution, delaying the swift action necessary to meet our climate goals, while endangering the health and safety of nearby communities.
The Pathways Alliance CCS project requires a full environmental impact assessment by the province of Alberta before it goes forward.
Suzanne Perkins is a rural and remote psychiatrist now working in the Northwest Territories, living in Canmore, AB. Claire E.H. Barber a rheumatologist, epidemiologist and health services researcher in Calgary, Alberta. She is a member of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE), Alberta Chapter.
Comments
Rather than asking whether carbon capture is safe, one should ask if it is efficacious on a large scale. The answer seems to be no since there are no cost effective carbon capture projects that have significantly reduced carbon. Switching to renewables is less expensive and more effective than carbon capture. The oil and gas companies are touting carbon capture as a way to reduce emissions with the PRODUCTION of oil and gas but not with what happens to the oil and gas once it's burned. Bottom line is carbon capture is a dodge, snake oil to be paid for by Canadian taxpayers so that oil and gas companies can continue to extract more oil and gas and develop new oil fields. Carbon capture is akin to cigarette companies adding filters to their cigarettes.
Carbon Capture and storage is a boondoggle from start to finish:
1. the initial build is expensive, wants to rely on public money, since private investment has likely calculated it will produce 0 profit.
2. the percentage of CO2 actually captured is a fraction of the CO2 produced...
3. the storage part of the plan reguires those same pipelines running through unlucky folks private/public land base...with their very own recipe for disaster. Read all about the Mississippi leak to realize how close they came to a worse disaster, involving massive loss of life.
4. The part this article doesn't mention: a percentage of that captured CO2 is used for EOR...that's ENHANSED OIL RECOVERY...to the neophytes on this article. EOR uses the CO2 to extract more oil from dying wells.....there's 0 guarantee that the CO2 so used will stay in the well........so EOR is a kind of very expensive shell game: CAPTURE IT HERE...RELEASE IT OVER THERE.
5. If the fantasy of Carbon Capture enables in situ mining/fracking for fossil gas, to continue...its a delay tactic..........a 'look over there' diversion that won't slow climate disasters by a fraction of a percentage point.
Way past time we used our money more wisely.......for massive build out of green technologies, and changes to our building codes and transportation grids that focus on reducing/removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
And we'd best include Methane in that reduction scenario. In the short term, its roughly 80 times as effective as CO2 in warming the planet. It's also a positive feedback loop. As the planet warms....more methane trapped at the poles is being released.
We simply don't have the time to waste tinkering with fossil fool ideas that prolong the Fossil Fuel Age.
"Storage sites would require close monitoring — forever." The parallel with nuclear waste is hard to ignore. Who will pay for the perpetual monitoring?
All this CCS effort does very little to reduce GHG emissions. In the case of the Gateway Alliance, the accounting never mentions the 'scope three' emissions which are the emissions that occur when our tar is burned by end users. Those emissions can account for around 80% of the total emissions from a barrel of tar. So even if they can get CCS to 'work' at the mine site or the refinery and capture 100% of the emissions there, the majority of the potential emissions will appear at the point of consumption. We'd just be exporting GHGs.
It's irrelevant. The thawing permafrost will produce more than we can store or remove. 1.5 isn't happening nor will 3 with present leadership everywhere