Biochar stores carbon in the soil for long periods of time… why am I repeating this point? Because biochar isn’t the only technology that stores carbon in the ground. When most researchers, politicians, and people from industry talk about carbon capture and storage, more often than not they are talking about deep geological storage. Think of huge power plants pumping the carbon dioxide they would emit into the atmosphere into deep geological formations instead. This form of storage hasn’t taken off and a new study by researchers at Princeton University has indicated that this may not be a viable option in the US.
They don’t talk about the high costs associated with storing carbon in this manner, but instead look at how fracking would compete with deep geological storage of carbon. For either of these processes, you can’t just drill or store carbon anywhere. And it just so happens that the places where you would drill for oil and gas are also the places where you would store carbon. In fact, 80% of the carbon storage space in the US would be ideal areas for fracking, and the process of fracking pretty much eliminates the possibility of storing carbon in these areas. Since fracking has been pushed to the front of the pack on domestic energy production, it is a safe bet that oil and gas exploration would take preference over deep geological storage of carbon. There is an obvious tradeoff in this situation between energy production and environmental responsibility, but the good news is that this tradeoff doesn’t have to be quite so extreme. Other solutions exist that can couple fracking with carbon storage.
With this in mind, the use of biochar at fracking sites would store some of the carbon that would have otherwise been placed in deep geological features. Additionally, this practice would also assist in remediating harmful compounds at these sites, one of the most serious and repeated complaints against the current fracking process.
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