Posted on 12/17/2016 10:32:53 AM PST by mdittmar
DECATUR – U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) today announced that the U.S. Department of Energy has awarded two grants totaling $10 million to the Illinois State Geological Survey (ISGS), housed at the University of Illinois’ Prairie Research Institute (PRI). The grants will fund projects to research commercial-scale geologic storage of carbon dioxide (CO2) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
“Any meaningful strategies for addressing the causes and dangers of climate change must include reduced carbon emissions,” Durbin said. “That’s why we are here today to announce a $10 million investment by the United States Department of Energy to study if 50 million tons of carbon dioxide can be stored deep underground here in Illinois. Split between two projects, the grants will support work that builds on the knowledge gained from Department of Energy’s previous carbon sequestration pilot-project.”
The two grants are part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Carbon Storage Assurance and Facility Enterprise initiative to assess the viability of carbon storage technologies and geological storage sites in Illinois. These projects will help demonstrate how carbon emissions from power plants can be safely sequestered, and could provide Illinois with an advantage in job training and technology deployment.
The ISGS received $8.9 million to address the feasibility of a commercial-scale CO2 geologic storage complex within the Mt. Simon sandstone formation located in Macon County. This work will build upon the success of the previous ADM-led pilot project, which sequestered over one million metric tons of CO2, to store over 50 million metric tons of CO2. The ISGS received an additional $1.2 million to study the challenges, opportunities, and risks involved in building a commercial-scale carbon capture and storage project at another location in East-Central Illinois.
Richland Community College, PRI’s Illinois Sustainable Technology Center, the Indiana Geological Survey, Schlumberger Carbon Services, Industrial Economics Incorporated, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Brigham Young University, Trimeric Corporation, and the University of Wyoming are partners in the projects.
Don’t steal my CO2
Did Obama sign another Porkulus Bill?
If anybody should know about Illinois “holes” full of air, it’s Dick Dirtbin.
If those things will hold CO2 I’ll bet they could hold natural gas too, adding to our strategic reserve.
Super Cooled printing presses? Maybe?
Who knows when we might run out of CO2 and this stored CO2 will come in handy?
WE are fools led by idiots.
Illinois had better spend that money fast. Because I have a feeling that any unspent money will be frozen on January 21, 2017.
If those that truly believe (I don’t) that man causes global warming by putting CO2 into the atmosphere, then the first thing to be called for would be elimination of the catalytic converter on the billions of cars driving around with them installed and working.
That source will never be touched because to get the CO2 the CO gets an extra oxygen added. Talk about unintended consequences. But then CO2 is NOT a pollutant as claimed.
“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”
You could do a lot of productive things with $10M. This boondoggle is a complete wast of money. Wonder who told the USGS to give the money to the University? Whose authority?
Down a rathole.
...how carbon emissions from power plants can be safely AND PROFITABLY sequestered... would make some sense.
But this is just free money.
How about planting giant Sequoia trees instead?
Another way to lock up CO2 would be to plant trees whose roots are slow to rot, such as cypress.
Special GMO trees could be developed.
Ah, Little Dick Durbin, the louse that roared, heard from yet again. $10 million thrown to the wind.
My Lord!!!!....10 million for that she-ite???????. A study showed that plant life thrives on higher levels of CO2. Study conducted by a group of 4th graders!!!!!...Cost of ZERO taxpayer money!!!!!
Catalytic converters work on unburned hydrocarbons. They don’t do anything to CO2 in the exhaust.
Ah, Little Dick Durbin, the louse that roared, heard from yet again. $10 million thrown to the wind.
Ten million, compared to the 20 trillion is akin to wondering about what an eternity is like. It’s like a mountain on one side of a river where annually a little bird picks up a bit from the mountain and flies back across the river. The next year it makes another flight, back once again.
This is only what the beginning of eternity is like and rather like the damned ten million of our money sent to fund the meanderings of weak-minds who call themselves scientists. It doesn’t mean a hell of a lot in comparison to the mountain of trillions, but it’s the damned principle of thing.
All Godless liberals should try to understand the story of the mountain and the little bird as they’re going to understand exactly what eternity is.
Pork Barrel Politics was perfected in the first half of the nineteenth century.
Henry Clay is probably as much the author of the system as anyone.
One wonders what this was a "payoff" for. Maybe that skunk, Durbin knows something the Dims don't want publicized....you think?
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