T.J. van Ark
3492826
Academic English 260
Word count: 660
US English
Why saving isn’t always good
With the average global temperature rising each year, scientists have been very active the past years on finding the source of this increase. Many hypotheses predicted that the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Earth’s atmosphere had a major effect on this, and a considerable amount of literature has been published on this. These studies have shown that these two are indeed in correlation. If the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere rises, so does the global temperature (Thomson). Because higher temperatures are not beneficial and can even be disastrous for the Earth’s environment (Zhang), concern about this increase is steadily growing and people all over the world are searching for methods to mitigate this process, or even reverse it. One of these methods is the capturing, compressing and storing of CO2 during release processes, to prevent it from entering the atmosphere. However, this method, also referred to as CCS, is undesirable and should not be put into practice.
The first reason why CCS is not a correct method for solving the climate problem is because capturing and compressing CO2 has a large energy penalty. The debut of CCS into our power plants will mean that 10-40% of the energy generated per plant will be used for the capturing and compressing of carbon (Rochon). Also taking into account that fossil fuels, our main source of energy in 2008 (Shafiee), are a depletable good this will only lead to a faster exhaustion of our natural resources.
Secondly, the introduction of CCS would require a new infrastructure in the entire energy world which costs a lot money that could be spent on other, more climate-efficient alternatives. Every new power plant will have be equipped with a CCS section which will drastically drive the prices of construction and maintenance up. The stored carbon dioxide will then have to be transported to...