What is “carbon sequestration”?
Carbon sequestration is the uptake and storage of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through carbon ‘sinks’. Approximately half the mass of a tree is carbon, making forests terrestrial carbon sinks. They absorb atmospheric CO2 and stock the carbon in their tissue while they are growing, continuing to hold it in biomass and soils when it is mature. That stock is, however, released if the forest is cut down. Forest clearance is in fact responsible for 20% of the global carbon dioxide emissions, more than the combined global emissions of cars, boats and planes.
Carbon sequestration is the capture and storage of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that would otherwise be emitted to the atmosphere. The greenhouse gases can be captured at the point of emission, or they can be removed from the air. The captured gases can be stored in underground reservoirs, dissolved in deep oceans, converted to rock-like solid materials, or absorbed by trees, grasses, soils, or algae.
Carbon sequestration is a hot research field that owes its latest popularity to the upswing in global attention directed towards global warming. The phrase “carbon sequestration” refers to efforts to capture excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, condense it, and store it in some benign way. Carbon capture and storage (CCSD) technologies are implemented in some limited way in many fossil fuel power plants. The technology for capturing is ahead of the technology for storing, which is just starting to be explored seriously. Carbon sequestration could be an important part of the fight against greenhouse gases. In early 2007, Al Gore and Richard Branson kicked up the interest in carbon sequestration technology by announcing a $25 million US Dollars (USD) prize to go to the first individual or group capable of removing a billion tons of carbon dioxide per year from the atmosphere for a ten year period. Clearly, removing a billion tons of anything from the atmosphere per year is not a tr
