New climate deal spurs hopes of more carbon storage projects

— The rolling prairie lands of northeastern Wyoming have been a paradise of lush, knee-deep grass for sheep, cattle and pronghorn antelope this summer. So far, removing carbon dioxide from power plant smokestacks and pumping it underground hasn’t been feasible without higher electricity bills to cover the technique’s huge costs. “We can ground truth our simulations.” McLaughlin’s team also does a lot of lab work on carbon sequestration back at the University of Wyoming School of Energy Resources in Laramie, studying on a microscopic scale how much carbon dioxide different sandstone layers can hold. Eventually they want to advance to carbon dioxide captured from the smoke plume at nearby Dry Fork Station, using a technique developed by California-based Membrane Technology and Research, Inc. WYOMING’S CARBON DREAMS With an eye toward carbon storage, Wyoming in 2020 became one of just two states, along with North Dakota, to take over from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency primary authority to issue the kind of permit McLaughlin and his team will need to pump large volumes of carbon dioxide, pressurized into a high density “supercritical” state, underground. But to defray costs, NRG Energy’s Petra Nova coal-fired power plant outside Houston sold its carbon dioxide to increase local oil production.