Is carbon capture solution to Delhi’s emissions?

Can all the carbon released into air from Badarpur power plant in south Delhi be trapped and stored beneath Delhi’s surface? Chetan Chauhan finds out.

Updated on: Jun 4, 2009, 23:57:14 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, Bergen (Norway)

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Can all the carbon released into air from Badarpur power plant in south Delhi be trapped and stored beneath Delhi’s

surface?

Yes, if Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg is to be believed.

But, a handful of protesters representing environmental groups like Green Warrior’s of Norway outside the Grieg Hall in
Bergen, 150 kms north of the capital city of Oslo, said it was extremely dangerous, as carbon can escape and cause catastrophe.

Many of the world leaders, including the chair of Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, R.K. Pachauri, agreed to some extent. “More research on safety aspect of carbon capture and storage (CCS) will have to be done,” he told Hindustan Times at the sidelines of a conference on CCS.

Earthquake or seismic movements are believed to be the biggest dangers for underground carbon storage, for which experts said CCS has not been “extensively” tested. “CCS is a hazardous way of climate change mitigation,” said Jon Bakke, head of the Norwegian environment group.

The CCS was installed at a cost of US$300 million in 1996 at Norway’s biggest off-shore oil exploration site and the PM said “it was time for technology transfer of CCS to developing countries like India and China”.

The carbon capture and storage technologies have been implemented in oil exploration sites by United States and Canada on a big scale and by Germany and Italy on a smaller. But, India and China are skeptical about the technology stating it would lead to higher power generation cost (up to Re 1 per unit in India) and have said that they cannot adopt the technology unless the developed world add financial incentives to do so.

The Norwegian PM told Hindustan Times that future big polluters like India and China can get financial incentives, provided they commit to adopt the technology.

If this happens, then, south Delhi can breathe cleaner air as the Badarpur power plant emits huge carbon dioxide into air resulting from burning of tonnes of coal every day to generate close to 1,000 megawatt (MW) of power.

For that to happen, Pachauri said, the proposers of the CCS technology will have to convince political leaders in poor countries. “India bhi jald maan sakta ha (India can also agree soon),” Pachauri told HT.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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