Ottawa, Ontario
As the name suggests, carbon dioxide capture and storage is a process by which carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are collected before they enter the atmosphere and placed in safe, sealed storage.
The technology, also known as carbon sequestration, is most useful in large industrial applications, such as fossil fuel-powered electricity plants, gas processing plants, fertilizer manufacturing facilities, and other sites that produce large amounts of CO2. Once captured and compressed, the CO2 is transported by pipeline or tanker to a storage site, usually underground.
With a wealth of fossil fuel reserves, as well as a wealth of suitable underground storage sites near its greatest fossil fuel reserves, Canada is in a unique position to take advantage of this technology. The Canada-Alberta ecoENERGY Carbon Capture and Storage Task Force has estimated that Canada has the potential to store underground as much as 600 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, roughly equal to three-quarters of Canada's current annual emissions of greenhouse gases.
Excellent opportunities exist in Western Canada, where a number of large emitters of CO2 are located in close proximity to ideal underground storage sites in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin. Longer-term storage potential also exists in Ontario and offshore in the Atlantic Provinces.
Why CO2 Capture and Storage?
Developing carbon capture and storage is important to Canada for several reasons. First and foremost, Canada is endowed with abundant fossil fuel deposits. Canada ranks second only to Saudi Arabia in oil reserves, has large natural gas deposits, and is also rich in coal reserves.
Developing carbon capture and storage technology can allow us to extract the economic benefits of these and other fossil fuel resources while respecting Canadians' environmental priorities.
As economies in Asia, Latin America and parts of Africa undergo rapid expansion and industrialization, the global demand for energy is expected to grow dramatically in the decades ahead. This presents market opportunities for energy exporting nations like Canada. By using carbon capture technology, Canada can help to meet – and profit from – the global demand for energy without compromising the environment.
Canada's position as a world leader in the development of carbon capture technology offers additional potential benefits.
By deploying carbon capture and storage technology on a wide scale domestically, Canada can demonstrate that this technology is effective in both cost and environmental terms. As other nations develop their own fossil fuel resources, they can look to Canada for the technology to develop those resources in an environmentally responsible way.
Weyburn, Saskatchewan: C02 Monitoring and Storage Project
An international team of researchers is involved in a carbon storage project near Weyburn in south-eastern Saskatchewan. C02 delivered by pipeline from a coal gasification plant in North Dakota is being injected into a partially depleted oilfield, preventing its release into the atmosphere. As an added benefit, as the carbon dioxide is pumped into the ground, it forces more oil to the surface, oil that couldn't be extracted by traditional means.
In addition to Natural Resources Canada, close to three dozen other organizations representing industry, government and the research community from Canada, the U.S. and Europe were involved in the first phase of the project.
The main goal of the project, which is sanctioned by the International Energy Agency, is to provide rock-solid evidence that C02 can be safely stored in this manner for a reasonable period of time (nominally 5,000 years). Test results and computer simulations during the first phase have indicated that it is.
