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Energy
- Details
- Written by Richard McKie
- Parent Category: Economy
- Category: Energy
- Hits: 14666
The following paper was written back in 2007. Since that time the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) struck and oil prices have not risen as projected. But we are now hearing about peak oil again and there have been two programmes on radio and TV in the last fortnight floating the prospect of peak oil again.
At the end of 2006 the documentary film A Crude Awakening warned that peak oil, ‘the point in time when the maximum rate of petroleum production is reached, after which the rate of production enters its terminal decline’, is at hand.
- Details
- Written by Richard McKie
- Parent Category: Economy
- Category: Energy
- Hits: 14297
(Carbon Sequestration)
Carbon Sequestration Source: Wikimedia Commons
At the present state of technological development in NSW we have few (perhaps no) alternatives to burning coal. But there is a fundamental issue with the proposed underground sequestration of carbon dioxide (CO2) as a means of reducing the impact of coal burning on the atmosphere. This is the same issue that plagues the whole current energy debate. It is the issue of scale.
Disposal of liquid CO2: underground; below the seabed; in depleted oil or gas reservoirs; or in deep saline aquifers is technically possible and is already practiced in some oil fields to improve oil extraction. But the scale required for meaningful sequestration of coal sourced carbon dioxide is an enormous engineering and environmental challenge of quite a different magnitude.
It is one thing to land a man on the Moon; it is another to relocate the Great Pyramid (of Cheops) there.