The higher the carbon tax, the more capture and sequestration technologies will be valued. It will be costly to build a fossil plant, a capture plant, and a natural gas-like infrastructure to pipe half a gigaton of captured carbon gas to special facilities for injection into geological formations or the ocean. The most economical approach, Farrell says, is to delay the mitigation response for coal-fired power plants because new technology should allow us to capture and sequester carbon emissions more economically in the next three decades. Carbon Management One challenge to carbon management is plant and animal biomass. But biomass can be a large source of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere if large tracts of forest are burned because of drought and demands to clear the land for agriculture and development.
Landfills are rich sources of methane.
Biomass and other materials disposed of in landfills decay to form landfill gas, which is mostly methane. The release of landfill methane to the air boosts greenhouse gas levels. But landfill gas can be captured and run through gas turbines to produce electricity, turning trash into treasure. Animal waste is also a challenge to carbon management. According to ORNL's John Sheffield, who is also director of the Joint Institute for Energy and Environment at the University of Tennessee, U.S. farms for raising cattle, poultry, and swine to help feed the world have 1.4 billion tons of wet manure, which annually emits almost 3 million metric tons of methane, a greenhouse gas.