BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
CCS is valuable even if years away

Hannah Chalmers and Jon Gibbins. "Carbon capture and storage: More energy or less carbon?" AIP Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy. June 30th, 2010: "To make CCS available as a reasonably well-proven option by around 2020, a first tranche of demonstration plants need to be deployed as quickly as possible. A second, larger tranche of reference plants then needs to continue the learning process and demonstrate the technology at scale and ready for multiple repeat orders. After this second tranche, CCS should be ready to contribute to a rapid decarbonization of the electricity supply from coal, natural gas, and biomass power plants in developed countries in the decade 2020–2030."
CCS doesn't have to be profitable to be a good idea

Jon Gluyas is chair in geoenergy at Durham Energy Institute, University of Durham, UK; Susie Daniels is at Geospatial Research in the university's department of earth sciences. "Do we really need carbon capture and storage? Yes, CCS is sensible and necessary" RSC. September 2010: "Superficially, Tsouris and Aaron's premise seems reasonable. Why should we do anything that does not make a profit? Fundamentally, burying something in the ground and not using it cannot make a profit whether it be CO2 or gold. Similarly, cleaning polluted rivers is intrinsically not profitable, nor is saving whales or having a state health service. Closer to home, the weekly visit of the dustman does not make a profit. Instead it provides a service at a cost. We pay to have our rubbish cleared away so that it does not accumulate in our neighbourhood. CCS is the same principle."
CCS distracts attention and resources from clean energy

Greenpeace International, an environmental non-profit organization, stated the following in a May 2008 report authored by Emily Rochon et al., titled "False Hope: Why Carbon Capture and Storage Won't Save the Climate," available at www.greenpeace.org: "Spending money on CSS is diverting urgent funding away from renewable energy solutions for the climate crisis... investing in a renewable energy future would save US$180 billion annually and cut CO2 emissions in half by 2050."
Carbon capture and sequestration raises costs and energy prices

The reasons that CCS is expected to cause such power price increases are several. Firstly, the increased energy requirements of capturing and compressing CO2 significantly raise the operating costs of CCS-equipped power plants. In addition there is added investment or capital costs. The process would increase the fuel requirement of a plant with CCS by about 25% for a coal-fired plant and about 15% for a gas-fired plant. The cost of this extra fuel, as well as storage and other system costs are estimated to increase the costs of energy from a power plant with CCS by 30-60%, depending on the specific circumstances. Pre-commercial CCS demonstration projects are likely to be more expensive than mature CCS technology, the total additional costs of an early large scale CCS demonstration project are estimated to be €0.5-1.1bn per project over the project lifetime.
C02 would leak too slowly (thousands of years) to be a concern

Richard Van Norden. "Carbon storage – what will the great-great-(...)-great-great grandchildren think?" The Great Beyond. June 28, 2010: "Shaffer calculates, if the leakage rate is 1% every 10 years, by 5000 AD mean atmosphere warming will be as bad as if no storage had been attempted. Dial that leakage rate down to 1% every 100 years, and we get to 20,000 AD before atmospheric warming is as bad as no storage at all. 20,000 AD? By this point humankind will surely be on other planets or, more likely, extinct. But Shaffer is concerned about future generations in 20,000 AD. He points out that nuclear waste management works on these timescales – tens of thousands of years. [...] Yes, as Shaffer says, a leaky store will create delayed warming in the future. But what a comfortingly long way away that future is, in his projections. Moreover, he considers that future humans make no attempt at re-sequestering escaped carbon dioxide. And he does not suggest that today we might try both to capture carbon dioxide underground and reduce our fossil fuel emissions. And aren’t there many more pressing practical concerns about carbon capture and storage to consider right now – such as whether it works over a hundred years, not whether it works over tens of thousands of years?"
CCS can be used to draw carbon directly from air.

A few engineering proposals have been made for the more difficult task of capturing CO2 directly from the air, but work in this area is still in its infancy. Global Research Technologies demonstrated a pre-prototype in 2007.[11] Capture costs are estimated to be higher than from point sources, but may be feasible for dealing with emissions from diffuse sources like automobiles and aircraft. The theoretically required energy for air capture is only slightly more than for capture from point sources. The additional costs come from the devices that use the natural air flow. Removing CO2 from the atmosphere is a form of geoengineering by greenhouse gas remediation.[3]
CCS will become cost-effective as it scales

"Do we really need carbon capture and storage?." RSC: "A key piece of Tsouris and Aaron's argument is that for a given investment we would have twice as much impact on CO2 emissions reduction by investing in wind energy than we would have by installing CCS. In a deft move he has admitted that prices may be volatile but using the best cost estimates today give this 2:1 leverage for wind (nuclear is even better). Balderdash! This is akin to comparing whale oil and mineral oil prices in the late 19th century. Whale oil was cheaper than mineral oil, meaning mineral oil required an initial fillip from government. But shortly thereafter the industry took off and prices fell dramatically as technology improved and the cost base lowered. The same has happened with computers, mobile phones, 3D seismic acquisition and so on and it will happen with CCS, a highly immature technology when compared with wind power."
Carbon capture and sequestration is "greenwashing" for coal

Greenpeace International, an environmental non-profit organization, stated the following in a May 2008 report authored by Emily Rochon et al., titled "False Hope: Why Carbon Capture and Storage Won't Save the Climate," available at www.greenpeace.org: "Letting CCS be used as a smokescreen for building new coal-fired power stations is unacceptable and irresponsible. 'Capture ready' coal plants pose a significant threat to the climate. The world can fight climate change but only if it reduces its dependence on fossil fuels, particularly coal. Renewable energy and energy efficiency are safe, cost effective solutions that carry none of the risks of CCS, and are available today to cut emissions and save the climate."
Without a price on carbon, CCS will not spread

Teryn Norris. "What’s Next for Nuclear Power and Carbon Capture Technology?" The Energy Collective. September 23, 2010: "Unfortunately, with the demise of climate legislation, the U.S. CCS industry now faces a difficult uphill battle. The reason for this is simple. CCS technologies add large capital costs to plant construction, and CCS retrofits to existing plants are almost as costly as building a plant from scratch. In addition to the equipment and technology requirements, the CCS process itself reduces a power plant’s efficiency by roughly 25%, which amounts to a substantial decline in revenue for the plant owner. Therefore, without a substantial price on carbon, it doesn’t make economic sense for a coal or natural gas producer to build a plant equipped with CCS technology. As the National Academies’ committee summarizes."
Sequestered carbon can be stored over the long-term.

For well-selected, designed and managed geological storage sites, the IPCC estimates that CO2 could be trapped for millions of years, and the sites are likely to retain over 99% of the injected CO2 over 1,000 years. In 2009 it was reported that scientists had mapped 6,000 square miles (16,000 km2) of rock formations in the U.S. that could be used to store 500 years' worth of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions.
Sequestered carbon can be stored at ocean floor.

Ocean storage Another proposed form of carbon storage is in the oceans. Several concepts have been proposed: 'dissolution' injects CO2 by ship or pipeline into the water column at depths of 1000 m or more, and the CO2 subsequently dissolves. 'lake' deposits CO2 directly onto the sea floor at depths greater than 3000 m, where CO2 is denser than water and is expected to form a 'lake' that would delay dissolution of CO2 into the environment. convert the CO2 to bicarbonates (using limestone) Store the CO2 in solid clathrate hydrates already existing on the ocean floor, or growing more solid clathrate.
Carbon can be captured and stored, beneficially, in cement.

Cement production captures CO2 from industrial smokestacks to be stored in cement during production. Globally, five percent of CO2 emissions is produced by manufacturing cement. The process of turning carbon into cement involves sea water as a major resource. In this process, sea water is split via electrolysis to make aqueous solutions of sodium hydroxide and hydrochloric acid. The resulting acid is then neutralized in a reaction with silicate rocks, producing sand and magnesium chloride. These two products can be used together or separately to melt ice on roads. The alkaline sodium hydroxide solution is combined with carbon dioxide streams from industrial smokestacks, trapping the carbon dioxide in the form of sodium bicarbonate, which in turn can be added back to sea water rich in magnesium and calcium ions, triggerring a series of reactions that lead to precipitation of magnesium carbonate and calcium carbonate. These two by-products can be used in the manufacture of cement. This process takes a considerable amount of funding, but some of the regulations made to greenhouse-gas emissions, such as carbon tax could eventually make this profitable as well as environment friendly.
Carbon capture and storage is smoke-and-mirrors tactic for big coal

Rainforest Action Network, an environmental non-profit organization, stated the following in a fact sheet on its website titled "The Dirty Truth about Clean Coal," available at www.ran.org (accessed Sep. 17, 2009): "CCS remains a 'smoke and mirrors' show - keeping attention away from real solutions. With global warming accelerating, we need to make smart energy choices now. Keeping fossil fuels in the ground is key to stopping climate change."
CCS can dramatically slash emissions from fossil fuels

George Monbiot, Visiting Professor of Planning at Oxford Brookes University, wrote in his 2007 book Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning: "[E]ven if we continued to produce most of our electricity from burning fossil fuels, we could, at least in theory, cut carbon emissions by 80 or 85 percent. The technology that would make this possible is called 'carbon capture and storage. This means stripping the carbon out of the fuel either before or after it is burnt, and burying it in the hope that it will stay where it's put."[1]
The transportation of captured carbon can be very expensive

Robert Bryce. "A bad bet on carbon." New York Times. May 12, 2010: "Here’s the second problem. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has estimated that up to 23,000 miles of new pipeline will be needed to carry the captured carbon dioxide to the still-undesignated underground sequestration sites. That doesn’t sound like much when you consider that America’s gas pipeline system sprawls over some 2.3 million miles. But those natural gas pipelines carry a valuable, marketable, useful commodity. By contrast, carbon dioxide is a worthless waste product, so taxpayers would likely end up shouldering most of the cost. Yes, some of that waste gas could be used for enhanced oil recovery projects; flooding depleted oil reservoirs with carbon dioxide is a proven technology that can increase production and extend the life of existing oilfields. But the process would be useful in only a limited number of oilfields — probably less than 10 percent of the waste carbon dioxide captured from coal-fired power plants could actually be injected into American oilfields."
Leakage of C02 from storage sites is a risk

A major concern with CCS is whether leakage of stored CO2 will compromise CCS as a climate change mitigation option. For well-selected, designed and managed geological storage sites, IPCC estimates that risks are comparable to those associated with current hydrocarbon activity. CO2 could be trapped for millions of years, and although some leakage occurs upwards through the soil, well selected stores are likely to retain over 99% of the injected CO2 over 1000 years. Leakage through the injection pipe is a greater risk.[22] Although the injection pipe is usually protected with Non-return valves (to prevent release on a power outtage), there is still a risk that the pipe itself could tear and leak due to the pressure. A small incident of this type of CO2 leakage was the Berkel and Rodenrijs incident in December 2008, where a modest release of greenhouse gas emissions resulted in the deaths of a small group of ducks. In order to measure accidental carbon releases more accurately and decrease the risk of fatalities through this type of leakage, the implementation of CO2 alert meters around the project perimeter has been proposed. In 1986 a large leakage of naturally sequestered carbon dioxide rose from Lake Nyos in Cameroon and asphyxiated 1,700 people. While the carbon had been sequestered naturally, some point to the event as evidence for the potentially catastrophic effects of sequestering carbon.[23] The Lake Nyos disaster resulted from a freak volcanic event one night, which very suddenly released as much as a cubic kilometre of CO2 gas from a pool of naturally occurring CO2 under the lake in a deep narrow valley. The location of this pool of CO2 is not a place where man can inject or store CO2 and this pool of CO2 was not known about nor monitored until after the occurrence of the natural disaster.
Algae CCS produces valuable bi-products.

Recycling CO2 is likely to offer the most environmentally and financially sustainable response to the global challenge of significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions from major stationary (industrial) emitters in the near to medium term.[citation needed] This is because newly developed technologies, such as Bio CCS Algal Synthesis value captured, pre-smokestack CO2 (such as from a coal fired power station, for example) as a useful feedstock input to the production of oil-rich algae in solar membranes to produce oil for plastics and transport fuel (including aviation fuel) and nutritious stockfeed for farm animal production. The CO2 and other captured greenhouse gases are injected into the membranes containing waste water and select strains of algae causing, together with sunlight or UV light, the oil rich biomass to double in mass every 24 hours. The Bio CCS Algal Synthesis process holds a number of key advantages over conventional CCS in that it is based on well established earth science photosynthesis; the technology is entirely retro-fittable and colocated with the emitter; the capital outlays offer a return upon investment due to the high value commodities produced (oil for plastics, fuel and feed)-
CCS will take far too long to implement for climate change

Rainforest Action Network, an environmental non-profit organization, stated the following in a fact sheet on its website titled "The Dirty Truth about Clean Coal," available at www.ran.org (accessed Sep. 17, 2009): "The concept of CCS is that we can curb climate change by capturing the emissions from coal plants and store them underground, safely away from our atmosphere for eternity. The most glaring flaw in this concept is that CCS technology is not likely to be a commercially viable option for at least another decade, and new coal-fired plants are slated to begin construction now. There are also no working models of CCS at a commercial-scale power plant anywhere in the world."
CCS makes continued dependence on hydrocarbons cleaner

Jon Gluyas is chair in geoenergy at Durham Energy Institute, University of Durham, UK; Susie Daniels is at Geospatial Research in the university's department of earth sciences. "Do we really need carbon capture and storage? Yes, CCS is sensible and necessary" RSC. September 2010: "Action is urgently required but what can we do now which will allow business to continue as reliably as usual - increase wind power 40 fold, increase solar power 700 fold while simultaneously reducing dependency on coal by a similar amount and halving the fuel consumption of two billion cars? Of course we must improve the efficiency of our energy consumption as well as further developing solar, wind, wave and other renewable power sources, not to forget significantly reducing deforestation. But will fossil fuels cease to be used in the short or even medium term? No, fossil fuels are just too easy to use. The physical, social and legislative infrastructures are well established. The energy concentration is too dense for an energy hungry world to ignore, even if finding new deposits of light oil (and gas) is getting ever more difficult. We accept that a sustainable future demands that we switch to renewable energy sources as fast as possible. In the meantime CCS provides a way to minimise emissions of greenhouse gases."
CCS passes C02-leakage problem to our children

Peter Montague, PhD Executive Director of the Environmental Research Foundation. "Carbon Sequestration: What's the Point?" December 1, 2008: "Instead of solving the CO2 problem that we've created, CCS would pass the problem along to our children and their children and their children's children. Basically, buried CO2 could never be allowed to leak back out. We should take responsibility for our own problems, not pass them to our children to manage. Scientists paid by the fossil fuel companies say the CO2 will never leak back out of the ground. What if they're mistaken? Then our children will inherit a hot, acid-ocean, ruined world."
Many companies are investing in CCS voluntarily.

This is not simply a matter of government investments in carbon capture and storage. Many companies are working in concert with non-profit organizations and others to find ways to implement the technology without any government funding or incentives. A September 16th, 2010 article in Energy Helpline.com is a good example of this: "Energy suppliers ScottishPower have announced a £5 million investment in a new carbon capture initiative. The company will be sponsoring the UK's first alliance between industry and academia to focus specifically on carbon capture and storage - a new technology designed to remove CO2 from the exhaust gasses at fossil fuel power stations."
Republika Srpska would add to former Yugoslavia EU voting power

Valery Perry. "The Republika Srpska Debate in Bosnia and Herzegovina". April 2008 - "As the country disintegrated into five, then six, and now seven smaller states, each with its eyes set on future EU membership, the incentive for even more dissolution is clear: an independent Republika Srpska, Vojvodina, Istria, Herceg-Bosna, Posavina, and more would allow Tito’s former homeland to ultimately wield significant power within the EU, even voting as a bloc to shift policy in its favor. As this process of subtle domination continued, the 'original' EU members, already discomfited by talk of 'ever closer union' and the feared invasion of Polish plumbers (or worse, Bosnian bakers!), increasingly withdraw from certain aspects of the Union, ultimately leaving a new “core” membership of……the former Yugoslavia."
Republika Srpska is making serious moves toward independence

"Bosnian Presidency's Silajdzic says Serb entity trying to act 'independent'." BBC. 15 Sept. 2008 - "Sarajevo, 15 September: The chairman of Bosnia-Hercegovina's tripartite presidency, Haris Silajdzic, on Monday [15 September] accused the Bosnian Serb authorities of violating the Bosnian Constitution, and confirmed that he had initiated a dispute before the Constitutional Court to suspend decisions that promote the Bosnian Serb entity, Republika Srpska, as an independent state. "The authorities of Republika Srpska want to win the status of a separate and independent international entity," Silajdzic told a news conference in Sarajevo."
Russian backing of Republika Srpska ind. could spark global conflict

Maroje Mihovilović. Putin lashes out at the West by way of Republika Srpska. National.hr. 11 Aug. 2007 - "up to now the Russian-Serbian political love affair has been limited only to the issue of Kosovo, and to Serbia; the Republika Srpska was outside of this. These last days, after Lajcak's measures, the situation has changed significantly. Suddenly Russia has become involved in the situation in Bosnia & Herzegovina in the same fashion it is involved in the events around Kosovo."
Republika Srpska does not fit criteria for statehood like Kosovo

Valery Perry. "The Republika Srpska Debate in Bosnia and Herzegovina". April 2008 - "While countless op-eds have been written about Kosovo independence and concerns over the likely precedent its recognition would set, the potential precedent of the RS is much more concerning, regardless of one’s ideological bent, than are the vulnerable dominoes of its quasi-state counterparts in the Balkans and the former Soviet Union- and for a number of reasons. The RS is not a product of centuries or even generations of population changes; it is not bounded by natural geographical markers; and it does not have any historical basis. It is, quite simply, the construct that remained after the ethnic cleansing and military campaigns of 1992 (and later 1995) purged this territory of non-Serbs, resulting in a boomerang-shaped region that proclaimed itself the Republika Srpska as war swept the country."
Secession no solution for discontented Bosnian Serbs

Valery Perry. "The Republika Srpska Debate in Bosnia and Herzegovina". April 2008 - "From the Nation-state to the Civic State As long as the Westphalian notion of the nation-state retains primacy in thinking and policy, ethnic cleansing and partition (in either order) will continue to be an accepted method of seeking stateness and legitimacy. The policy community must find improved ways of removing the incentive of a disgruntled group to declare oneself a state. This will not be simple, but it could be achieved through a dedicated combination of democracy building, development and adherence to international human rights conventions. Ensuring the devolution of governance/subsidiarity in democratizing countries, though under a framework of state-level/international guiding principles, can meet community and higher level political and social interests. Developing stronger mechanisms for diversity and minority rights [...] The question U.S. policymakers must ask is how the effort in BiH can yet succeed, for if a multinational, democratic state cannot be successfully consolidated in Europe’s backyard, there is little hope for other such parts of the world. That would be a dim vision of the future, and one marked by separation, segregation and conflict that would ultimately come at a high human cost."