Is capturing and extracting carbon dioxide the key to solving our energy crisis, as Shell's Danish CEO touts?

No

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by Patrick Coyle

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Carbon Dioxide (CO2) has next to nothing to do with an energy crisis. CO2 is the byproduct of much energy production; any energy production that is based on burning organic material produces CO2. Increasing CO2 production means the opposite of an energy crisis, it marks increased energy production.

That is not to say that CO2 is not part of a problem. It is one of a family of gasses known as greenhouse gasses. These gasses have the tendency to trap atmospheric heat by allowing incoming visible solar radiation, but blocking out going infrared radiation. Green house gasses have been a natural part of our planet's atmosphere for longer than mankind has been on the planet. They have helped to maintain a livable range of temperatures at our planet's surface.

The concentration of CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere has never been constant, it has changed throughout the lengthy history of the planet. For instance, when green plants came on the scene they took CO2 out of the atmosphere and returned oxygen (O2), a new gas in the atmosphere. As more plants started to grow, the O2 content increased and the CO2 content decreased. As more land animals came into the world their production of CO2 from O2 helped to bring out a new equilibrium between the production of CO2 and O2 was developed, an equilibrium that changes as the balance of plants and animals changes.

Mankind has been changing that equilibrium to a higher concentration of CO2 since mankind started burning fossil fuels, first coal, then oil, and finally natural gas. This has brought old carbon back to the planets surface and forced it into the atmosphere. At the same time there was a reduction of plant mass that could remove CO2 from the atmosphere and replace it with O2 because of the rise of cities and clearing of forests for agriculture. As a result a new equilibrium will be reached sometime in the future with a higher CO2 concentration.

Exactl y what the results of that new equilibrium will be on the environment is still being studied. Most, but certainly not all atmospheric scientists, agree that the average atmospheric temperature will be higher, but no one is sure how much higher. This is because the interaction of the atmosphere with plants, animals and the physical earth is so complex that no model has been developed that can predict atmospheric effects with any accuracy.

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