HR: 1340h
AN: U43C-1408    [Abstracts]
TI: Toward an effective governance regime for geologic carbon storage
AU: * Mignone, B K
EM: bmignone@brookings.edu
AF: The Brookings Institution, 1775 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Washington, DC 20036, United States
AU: Socolow, R H
AF: Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, United States
AB: Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology is currently poised to play a significant role in mitigating CO₂ emissions from future fossil fuel combustion, especially from coal-fired power plants, which are expected to rapidly increase in number over the next several decades. At the same time, large-scale deployment of CCS continues to be impeded by concerns about the long-term integrity of geologic storage reservoirs. In this study, we apply established concepts of learning-by-doing to the problem of reservoir leakage. Our results suggest that when learning is present, traditional measures of (initial) reservoir integrity do not sufficiently capture the time- integrated behavior of the system that is most relevant to the global CO₂ problem. In one formulation, we find that when learning is explicitly incorporated into a reservoir model, total leakage is always finite and scales approximately quadratically with the learning time constant and inversely with the initial retention time constant. To highlight the policy relevance of this study, we consider the implications of these results for the larger site licensing process. We expect that an upper bound on total allowable leakage will be decided by policymakers. Armed with this number and some informed, expert-driven judgments about the rate at which learning will proceed, a regulator could use our model, or a more sophisticated variant, to calculate an upper bound on the maximum initial leakage rate. This criterion would then be one of several prerequisites to certification. The entire process could be amended over time as new data is made available. We hope that our model will provide a platform for scholars from different fields to engage one another and to work toward an acceptable, compelling and long-lasting management framework for CCS.
DE: 6319 Institutions
DE: 6324 Legislation and regulations (6615)
DE: 6600 PUBLIC ISSUES
SC: Union [U]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting