Greenpeace and other NGOs also claim
that injecting CO2 into the oceans could
harm wildlife.
A last minute veto from Norway’s
environment minister
in late August, has stopped
what would have been the
world’s first attempt to demonstrate sequestration
of carbon in the oceans by
injecting liquid carbon dioxide (CO2)
into the Norwegian Sea. Carbon sequestration
is being considered as a technique
to remove the main greenhouse gas,
CO2, from the atmosphere to curb global
warming.
Norwegian Environment Minister
Borge Brende stated that: “In the opinion
of the environment ministry, the use
of deep sea marine areas as potential
storage places for CO2 must first be thoroughly
discussed at the international
level and clarified legally”.
Led by the Norwegian Institute for
Water Research (Niva), a coalition including
American, Japanese, Canadian
and Australian organizations had
planned to inject five metric tonnes of
liquid CO2 at 800 metres depth off the
coast of Norway.
The project was originally set up to
run a similar test off Hawaii, but this
plan was dropped in the face of local
opposition.
Capturing and sequestering CO2 from
fossil fuel burning is being pursued as a
possible means of reducing greenhouse
gas emissions. Last year, the European
climate change program concluded that
it offered “good potential” for reducing
emissions, but that further research is
needed, in particular to reduce costs.
The Norwegian oil firm Statoil is already
injecting some one million metric
tonnes of CO2 per year into the rock
strata of an offshore oilfield in the North
Sea, but no one has yet tried sequestration
in the oceans.
Environmental groups argue that the
project would have meant “dumping”
CO2 in the ocean in violation of the 1972
London dumping convention and of the
1992 Ospar convention on protection of
the North Sea environment. Greenpeace
and other NGOs also claim that injecting
CO2 into the oceans could harm
wildlife, and that the gas might return
much more quickly than expected to the
atmosphere, undoing the object of the
exercise. Also, the NGOs fear that sequestration
of CO2 might prop up the
fossil fuel industries and distract attention
from efforts to move towards a low
carbon economy based on renewable
energy such as solar and wind.
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