Returning Carbon to Nature (ePub)

and this from the Geoscientist: http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/June-2014/Books-and-Arts

Returning Carbon to Nature: Coal, Carbon Capture and Storage In this slim, dense, yet highly readable volume, BGS Director of Science and Technology Mike Stephenson sets out the whole landscape of coal use, climate change and CCS with great clarity. The account benefits greatly from the ‘long view’ which geology affords.

The first chapter, ‘Of Hockey Sticks and Coal’, sets out the central dilemma: reconciling the increasingly pressing need to address climate change with the ongoing centrality of coal to economic development in the world’s most populous countries. It is no good wringing our hands and wishing it were otherwise: "A CO2 emissions strategy for these countries therefore relies on an abatement method that is consistent with long-term coal use, or coal use as a bridge to renewables. Such an abatement method could be carbon capture and storage".

The second chapter takes a brief pause from present-day controversies to offer an absorbing update on the scientific understanding of coal formation and its consequences for palaeoclimate. Stephenson highlights how the swift-growing nature of the main Carboniferous swamp plants, coupled with rapid subsidence and burial of the peats, led to a “negative greenhouse effect attested by δ13C signatures in sedimentary organic matter.

The account then returns to the present day, with overviews of carbon capture technology and its scope for deployment in distinct industrial clusters in the UK and elsewhere (Chapter 3), and the practicalities of creating deep underground carbon stores (Chapter 4). In addressing the key question "Is there enough storage space, then?" Stephenson examines CCS prospects in the crux countries of India and China.

Clearly those prospects need much more research, but by this account there are certainly grounds for cautious optimism. The fifth chapter ("Will it leak?") addresses the bête noir of the new generation of geologically-challenged opponents of all subsurface engineering, while the final chapter ("Accounting for carbon") considers the economics and politics of making CCS happen. Again, the discussion is honest, lucid and engaging.

The book is beautifully illustrated in colour throughout, though Elsevier could have made put a little more effort into proof-reading, and putting the title on the spine might have been useful. But these quibbles are minor: the book is a tour de force and I recommend it without hesitation.