Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Carbon Capture

We all know how serious the threat of green house gases (GHG) these days is. There have been considerable discussions, awareness and activities worldwide to reduce carbon emissions and to look for alternate energy sources more actively. Many nations are planning to cut their carbon emissions or GHG emissions or try to offset them by purchasing carbon credit. One way to reduce carbon emissions is not to use fossil fuel like coke or oil. But the problem is for the industries to switch to alternate energies, it would take sometime (could really be a decade or more). This is not an immediate solution.

Few nations are trying for some alternate ways of reducing emissions. One such method is, CCS Carbon Capture and Storage. In this method, the carbon is captured at the source and pumped underground. Such a method is expected to reduce CO2 pollution by 40% according to oil major Shell. Ofcourse such a method can shoot two birds with one bullet. Shell is providing this services to companies that want to reduce carbon emissions. Shell makes money from these companies by helping them reduce carbon emissions and guess where do they pump this gas? They pump this gas into oil fields so that the oil that could not be extracted from the normal levels can now be extracted because due to the pressure created by CO2 in these oil fields, the oil levels raise above. :-)

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