The Green Optimistic

Germany has an ongoing plan to store their CO2 emissions underground. They used a special drill during tests earlier this year for the carbon capture project in Ketzin. The GFZ geoscience institute says that Germany will inaugurate Europe’s first underground carbon dioxide storage site.

Ketzin is located near Berlin, and the project’s name is CO2SINK. This carbon sequestration project is part of a larger one initiated by several European countries.

60,000 tonnes of the greenhouse gas will be pumped into porous, salt water-filled rock at depths of more than 600 metres (656 yards) over the next two years. The first injection of gas was scheduled to take place later on Monday.

Reinhard Huettl, the science director of the GFZ centre in Potsdam, said that the underground storing of carbon dioxide should slow down global warming and get humanity extra time to develop alternative energy sources.

“The storage of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide is an option to win time in the development and introduction of carbon dioxide-reduced energy technology,” he said.

Huettl said that the site will become a “unique worldwide laboratory” to study the success of the world’s main global warming gas.

Some of the environmental groups expressed their pessimism because they’re afraid of toxic leaks that could follow afterwards.

[via physorg]