DutchNews.nl - CO2 storage plan may be scrapped

Ministers have commissioned new research into the suitability of using an empty gas field near Rotterdam to store carbon dioxide emissions, news agency ANP reports.

This means plans to store the gas under a housing estate in Barendrecht, east of Rotterdam, may not now go ahead, ANP says.

Barendrecht council is totally opposed to the plan, arguing the risks to locals are unclear and house prices may collapse. The potential storage site lies under a residential area of 7,600 homes.

The government sees underground storage as a good way of coping with excess CO2 and has set aside millions of euros to fund experiments. The Barendrecht area has been earmarked for storing CO2 from Shell's Pernis refinery. Other potential sites are also under investigation.

So residents are not worried about natural gas fields with highly flammable methane gas under high pressure but are opposed to a harmless gas like CO2 (under a lower pressure regime) in the same location as a replacement of the earlier extracted gas? How irrational

Of course, the ridiculously expensive and useless exercise of storing CO2 underground should be rejected for other more sensible reasons, namely that the atmosphere is presently CO2-impoverished (385 ppm) if we consider that in earlier geological periods the concentration was between 1000 and 7000 ppm and life was thriving. CO2 is an essential gas for plant growth, and food production will increase with increasing concentrations. So let's be happy with all the fossil fuels which we are now burning. And if it happens to increase the surface temperature a bit (which is not at all certain) so much the better. A colder climate will cause much more hardship for the biosphere, including humans, than a warmer one.

By Chris Schoneveld | June 26, 2009 6:24 PM