Northeast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership Investigation

Geologic carbon storage is a viable option for the electric power industry in the "Northeast" region to meet regional and forthcoming federal CO2 cap-and-trade programs. Capturing CO2 emissions and storing the gas in underground geological formations could significantly reduce the amount of CO2 released to the atmosphere. However, before this can be implemented, site-specific geological research needs to be conducted to determine which formations are potentially capable of storing the quantity of CO2 emitted by power plants in the Northeast region. While the target geosequestration formations in the Northeast may have less storage capacity than those in the Midwest, Southeast or Southwest, the available capacities may be large enough to sequester a significant fraction of the CO2 produced by some regional power plants (which are also smaller, individually and in total, than those in the other regions). The study will also conduct baseline assessments of electric power producer plants and CO2 emission estimates and create first level screening on potential geologic structures for CO2 sequestration. The work will establish a general database of "Other Uses" (current industrial and technological innovations/options), characterize transport issues, both on land and offshore, and, provide general guidance on the physical and land-use constraint factors of "add-on" capture technologies at existing power plants.