Making trap for greenhouse gas

SYDNEY - New Zealand coal miner Solid Energy has joined other miners in an Australian project to capture carbon dioxide emissions and store them underground to combat global warming.

"Our experiments will simulate natural geological processes that trap CO2 for up to millions of years," said Peter Cook, chief executive of the research group conducting the project. "We will be putting the CO2 back underground, from where it came."

The A$30 million project - partly financed by companies including Chevron, Xstrata and Rio Tinto, as well as Solid Energy - will be carried out by the Co-operative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technologies and will be located in western Victoria.

The project will simulate the capture of CO2 from a power station, transport it several kilometres by pipeline and store it about 2km beneath the earth's surface.

The stored CO2 will be monitored using sophisticated techniques that can detect and track the gas in deep geological formations.

Solid Energy has contributed $2 million to the project, which is due to start early this year.

Solid Energy research manager Tim Moore said: "It is likely that CO2 can be effectively stored in many of our deep, unmineable coal seams.

"CO2 is compressed and injected into the rock layers or coal seams and, in many cases, helps to displace natural gas which can be captured and used at the same time. Eventually, the CO2 storage site is sealed and a monitoring system is set up."

Similar, larger-scale projects are under way in Norway, Canada and Algeria, but this is the first such project in Australasia.

Chevron, the second-largest US oil company, plans to use underground disposal of carbon dioxide at its A$11 billion Gorgon liquefied natural gas project in Western Australia, while so-called geo-sequestration may also be used to reduce harmful emissions from coal-fired power plants.

Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that takes a lot of the blame for global warming. Australia, which had its hottest year on record last year, relies on coal for about 77 per cent of its power generation.

Geo-sequestration is one of the technologies to be discussed this week in Sydney by the six members of the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, which aims to promote clean energy technology as a way to tackle climate change without sacrificing economic growth.

The first meeting of the partnership - involving the United States, Japan, China, India, Australia and South Korea - is being held to "complement, not rival", the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gases.

Unlike Kyoto, the six members will not be backing fixed targets for cutting emissions and some analysts expect any resolution to be vague.

Government sources said the partnership planned to create a fund to help develop cleaner energy technologies, which Australia would kick-start with about A$100 million.

The partnership will also be counting on private support to develop and deliver technologies such as clean coal and renewable energy, and will meet some of the world's top energy companies, including BHP Billiton and ExxonMobil, during the two-day talks.

"It's a meeting with the political and business clout to make a real difference," said Australian Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane.

But Australian Environment Minister Ian Campbell warned that there would be no "silver bullet" from the first meeting, which starts tomorrow.

"I think ultimately the test of the success of this partnership will be over a number of years and will ultimately be whether we can save the climate," Campbell said.

What a gas

* The project will simulate the capture of CO2 from a power station.
* It will transport it several kilometres by pipeline and store it about 2km beneath the earth's surface.
* The behaviour of the stored CO2 will be monitored using sophisticated techniques that can detect and track the gas in deep geological formations.

- BLOOMBERG, Reuters, staff reporter