Economic dimensions of geological CO2 storage: key factors in an assessment of sub-seafloor and continental sequestration options

Capalbo, Susan, Wu, Caiwen, Goldberg, David, Matter, Juerg and Slagle, Angela (2009) Economic dimensions of geological CO2 storage: key factors in an assessment of sub-seafloor and continental sequestration options. [in special issue: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Greenhouse Gas Control Technologies (GHGT-9), 16–20 November 2008, Washington DC, USA] Energy Procedia, 1 (1), 2745-2752. (doi:10.1016/j.egypro.2009.02.045).

Abstract

Geological sequestration offers long term storage opportunities that differ in terms of technical capacity and characteristics, and in terms of economic costs and benefits. In this paper we outline a simple economic framework that reflects the planning problem for sequestering CO2 in alternative geological sinks and highlights the differences in the environmental risks and the economic costs of alternative sinks. The marginal costs of alternative geological sequestration options must be compared to measures of marginal benefits that take into account the probability of local and global environmental risks and other regulatory requirements. We direct our discussion of an application of this framework to the case of geological sequestration in deep-sea basalts and provide an initial assessment of how this framework could be implemented to quantify the long-term economic costs relative to other continental geological storage options.

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Contributors

Author: Juerg Matter

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