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UN Scientists Say Burying Carbon Emissions Could Help Minimize Global
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Warming
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(http://enews.voanews.com/t?ctl=F27053:3919ACA

They say carbon emissions from power plants and factories could be
buried before they enter atmosphere





Coal power plantA United Nations scientific panel says global warming
could be minimized by burying carbon emissions from power plants and
factories before they enter the atmosphere.

One hundred experts from 32 countries report that underground storage
of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas blamed for rising
temperatures, could play a major role in easing global warming.

The group issued its findings in Montreal, Canada Monday as part of
the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The document was
approved by more than 200 delegates from 100 countries.

The U.N. panel had previously concluded that human activities such as
fossil fuel burning have raised average global temperatures between
half and one degree Celsius in recent decades and that temperatures
will continue to increase by one-and-a-half to nearly six degrees by
the end of this century.

The new report concludes that storing carbon dioxide below Earth's
crust could reduce the amount entering the atmosphere by 20 to 40
percent by the middle of this century. The panel reports that carbon
burial could cut the cost of countering climate change by 30 percent
or more over the next 100 years.

The head of the U.N. Environment Program, Hans Toepfer, says the most
important solutions to climate change remain energy efficiency and
cleaner energy sources. But he says carbon capture and storage
technologies can supplement these efforts. "We have not a silver
bullet solution. We must underline the high importance of energy
efficiency development, where we are really saving energy," he said.
"And we have to underline the high importance of other energies, not
carbon intensive energies, saving this other part of the limited
resources of fossil fuel."

The intergovernmental panel says many components of carbon dioxide
capture and storage technology already exist, including pipelines and
gas injection into geological formations. Three projects are operating
in Algeria, Canada, and the North Sea off Norway. Furthermore, the
experts say underground storage capacity is likely to be large enough,
although the actual size of such reservoirs is uncertain. Other
possible applications, such as ocean storage, are still being
researched.

The costs of gathering carbon dioxide at the source, transporting it
to a burial facility, and injecting it underground are estimated to
vary between $17 and almost $200 dollars a ton, depending on the
source and methods used.

Mr. Toepfer says the price would be worth it if governments adopt
policies making carbon pollution expensive. That's why such policies,
he says, are important. "If you have no limitation of CO-2, you don't
have the demand for those technologies. So you must, of course, have
the demand. Otherwise, you will not have those technologies used," he
said.

The new report and the existing carbon storage projects are
unconvincing to environmental activists.

They worry that carbon dioxide could leak, or worse, be released in
large amounts by an earthquake, worsening global warming. The expert
panel says the chance of leakage is not higher than that from existing
natural gas and petroleum pipelines. But Greenpeace International says
there are still too many questions about environmental risks, safety,
and costs for carbon burial to be deployed widely.