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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Ipcc) was created in 1988. The IPCC released its first assessment of the earths, climate change in 1990 stating "We are certain of the following: there is a natural greenhouse effect...; emissions resulting from human activities are substantially increasing the atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gases: CO2, methane, CFCs and nitrous oxide. These increases will enhance the greenhouse effect, resulting on average in an additional warming of the Earth's surface. The main greenhouse gas, water vapor, will increase in response to global warming and further enhance it." At this time global warming began to become a major issue. Even more so at the close of the decade, when reports were released stating that the 90s was the warmest decade on record. The burning and consumption of fossil fuels accounts for about 75-80% of the anthropogenic CO2 emissions in the world. Roughly 1 third of those emissions (the percentage of emissions released via factories) are thought to have a possibility to be stored via Carbon sequestration (mainly geologic carbon sequestration.) Therefore carbon sequestration is becoming one of the most frequently studied solutions for decreasing and or eliminating factory CO2 emissions, especially among power plants.

There are currently two types of carbon sequestration, one being geologic carbon sequestration, and the other being terrestrial carbon sequestration. Both processes have numerous aspects to them. Terrestrial sequestration of CO2 has to do with the transfer of CO2 from the atmosphere into things such as soil, vegetation, and the ocean. Geologic sequestration of CO2 has to do with storing CO2 in underground formations after factories, such as power plants have captured it.

Seen as there are so many aspects to both kinds of carbon sequestration processes, we will be focusing mainly on geologic sequestration. However below is a brief look into the process of terrestrial carbon sequestration. Terrestrial sequestration involves both removing the CO2 from the air via plants, soil, and vegetation which use photosynthesis that consumes CO2; as well as limiting CO2 emissions from terrestrial ecosystems. Many scientists now believe that making small changes to farming practices is an inexpensive and immediate way to enhance terrestrial sequestering. Practices such as minimizing soil disturbance and erosion, which can be done via no till farming, and effective soil erosion control programs.

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