I don’t think you have a choice but to pull CO2 back that has already made it out, or is about to make it out, because we are not overnight shutting down all the coal plants. Klaus Lackner Read Quote
The fact that companies are getting into building power plants that collect their own CO2 on-site shows there’s some leadership in that industry. Some industries have seen the writing on the wall: that carbon will have to be managed. Klaus Lackner Read Quote
I believe that it is impossible to stop people from using the fossil fuels, so we need to develop technologies which allow us to use them without creating environmental havoc on the planet. Klaus Lackner Read Quote
The idea that somewhere in the desert far away you have a CO2 absorber that’s removing the CO2 from the air is an attractive one. It’s a costly process that many will say is too expensive, but so are fuel cells in cars. It’s a matter of political will to move this forward. Klaus Lackner Read Quote
In a well-monitored storage site, it is always possible to release CO2 in a controlled manner in the unlikely event that it threatens to escape. Such a release is certainly no worse than ignoring the emission in the first place. Klaus Lackner Read Quote
Injecting CO2 into an underground reservoir would certainly change the local environment and thus affect the organisms that live there. Some will thrive, and others will suffer. While we should minimize such impacts, they cannot be avoided completely. The same happens when one plows a field, builds a house or a road, or waters a lawn. Klaus Lackner Read Quote
My personal view is the true long-term storage is mineral carbonates, which is some form of accelerated weathering. Klaus Lackner Read Quote
Technologies simmer along before they are feasible. That simmer can be short or long, but then they get traction. And from there to being huge is a couple of decades. Klaus Lackner Read Quote
It is important that carbon storage is carefully regulated, that the process is transparent to the public, and that there is a clear accounting of what happened to the CO2. This is particularly true of underground storage, where there is always a small chance that pressurized CO2 could escape. Klaus Lackner Read Quote
