Yeah... I can eat a few more pieces

The third piece of the carbon cake deals with pipelines, compressing the carbon and finally sending it into the reservoirs.  We have theoretically built the expensive pipelines at this point and are pumping the captured CO2 to the injection site.  I don't want to talk about pipelines too much, but there is always the possibility of leaks and degradation.  Once a pipeline is built, it will hopefully last a long time and not require too much maintenance.  Historically, long pipelines have held up pretty well, but eventually all require some maintenance.  If the pipeline is left unattended or not properly analyzed often major problems can occur. 

One example is the Alaskan pipeline.  In an article by the New York Times in 2006, oil spill raises concerns on pipeline maintenance, our good friend BP was accused of improperly maintaining the pipeline.  This negligence resulted in over 200,000 gallons of crude being spilled.  BP denied that it was trying to cut costs by reducing the maintenance schedule to the pipeline, but company workers were recorded as advising BP to keep up the maintenance on several occasions.  It was said afterward that "we know that this could have been prevented," by Marc Kovac, a United Steelworkers Union rep which represents workers at the BP facility. 

Back to compressing the carbon dioxide though.  Unfortunately, capturing CO2 via CCS is energy intensive due to thermal energy requirements, and compressing the CO2 only adds to this extra cost.  We already established that nearly 25% of the energy produced from coal is used in the operating and capturing process, and after combining this with the additional transportation and compression costs, the amount of energy consumed from original production is closer to 40%, yikes!

Getting the CO2 into the reservoir is actually not that difficult.  Drilling platforms are built with sufficient equipment to pump CO2 at controlled rates. 

The reservoirs themselves are actually the bigger problem.  Several coal plants exist very far distances from potential reservoirs and therefore fall out of the category for a potential CCS due to extra costs from transport.  Along with potential reservoirs, leaks are always the biggest concern.  Leaks of carbon dioxide could lead to harmful effects in the surrounding areas.  The largest recent disaster caused by CO2 occurred in Cameroon, central Africa.  A volcanic crater-lake known as Nyos belched bubbles of CO2 into the still night air and the gas settled around the lake's shore, where it killed 1800 people and countless thousands of animals.  Contaminating aquifers also ranks high on the list of potential risks.  Granted this was not linked to CCS, but it shows the potential ramifications.

One of the main things that has been holding CCS back is the government.  Are they doing this on purpose or are there deeper political agendas at hand?  Get ready for some more cake.