To the energy suppliers in Germany it is a given fact: The country will rely on its coal reserves within the coming decades. If not, then half of the land will have to be paved with wind wheels, says E.on CEO Wulf Bernotat in an interview with Welt am Sonntag. The politics guidelines of the countries see it in a similar light – and so the Federal Ministry of Education and Research supports several programs to research on Carbon Capture and Storage, a technology that seperates CO2 in the combustion process before it enters the atmosphere. The trapped greenhouse gas is afterwards stored in hope of never to be diffused again. If we have to use coal for the energy mix in the near future we have to make sure that it is as little emissive as possible the agenda says.Club of Pioneers is visiting a meeting on Carbon Capture and Storage (CSS) Wednesday 9th May in Leipzig. The panel discussion will be conducted by me. My colleague Anke will talk to the panellists before and after the discussion to get to know their view more detailed and report it back to you, our community. The meeting is organised by Geo Technologies, a research program of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the German Research Community (DFG).Carbon capture and storage is the technical process which divides CO2 from the other chemical elements that are part of fossil fuel burning processes. Capturing CO2 can be applied to large point sources, such as fossil fuel or biomass energy facilities. There are several methods of capturing CO2. Technology for this venture is already available but the costs that increase with the enormous energy consumption during the capture are the main obstacle for applying this technology on a large scale.

Animated picture of a Carbon Storage system
CSS applied to a modern conventional power plant can reduced CO2 emissions up to 80-90%. The capturing and compressing CO2 on the other hand would increase the fuel needed in such power plant about 10-40%, scientists estimate. Economically spoken the costs of energy generated in power plants with CSS would raise about 30-60%, an increase no customer would be ready to pay.However, Carbon Capture and Storage is seen as one credible approach to mitigate climate change.The Storage of CO2 is a new area of research. There are several options of storage. The two mostly mentioned are the geological and the ocean storage. The approach of the researchers of Geo Technologies is about the geological approach exclusively. Geological Storage includes oil fields, gas fields, saline formations, unminable coals seams. In theses cases various physical and geochemical trapping mechanisms would prevent the CO2 from escaping the surface. In the ocean storage on the other hand the approach of forming a CO2-lake on the ground of the sea and the approach of distributing it to the water in about 3000 meter depth can not guarantee the same security and long-term lasting of the CO2. Grafic 1: The Association of German EngineersAnimation: climatechangeaction.blogspot.com