Can carbon sequestration reduce global levels of carbon dioxide?
Long before global warming was a serious part of the political debate, ORNL researchers were logging greenhouse gases, tracing the carbon cycle and tracking climate change effects. Today, scientists are able to predict, with increasing accuracy, trends in climate change and to gauge the potential effectiveness of remediation efforts. Among these remediation strategies is carbon sequestration, a method of capturing and storing CO2, the most common greenhouse gas. ORNL’s carbon sequestration research is concentrated in three main areas: ocean sequestration, carbon capture and storage, and biosequestration. One ocean sequestration approach is to fertilize the ocean’s natural carbon cycle by seeding the water with iron to stimulate plankton growth, thereby pulling more CO2 out of the atmosphere. The other ocean-based approach involves injecting captured CO2 deep into the sea where, because of the extreme pressure and cold temperatures, the gas would settle into dense pools and remain indef
