Mounting Costs Slow the Push for Clean Coal

By MATTHEW L. WALD Published: May 30, 2008 - New york times

WASHINGTON — For years, scientists have had a straightforward idea for taming global warming. They want to take the carbon dioxide that spews from coal-burning power plants and pump it back into the ground.

President Bush is for it, and indeed has spent years talking up the virtues of “clean coal.” All three candidates to succeed him favor the approach. So do many other members of Congress. Coal companies are for it. Many environmentalists favor it. Utility executives are practically begging for the technology.

But it has become clear in recent months that the nation’s effort to develop the technique is lagging badly.

In January, the government canceled its support for what was supposed to be a showcase project, a plant at a carefully chosen site in Illinois where there was coal, access to the power grid, and soil underfoot that backers said could hold the carbon dioxide for eons.

Perhaps worse, in the last few months, utility projects in Florida, West Virginia, Ohio, Minnesota and Washington State that would have made it easier to capture carbon dioxide have all been canceled or thrown into regulatory limbo.

Coal is abundant and cheap, assuring that it will continue to be used. But the failure to start building, testing, tweaking and perfecting carbon capture and storage means that developing the technology may come too late to make coal compatible with limiting global warming.
“It’s a total mess,” said Daniel M. Kammen, director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley.

“Coal’s had a tough year,” said John Lavelle, head of a business at General Electric that makes equipment for processing coal into a form from which carbon can be captured. Many of these projects were derailed by the short-term pressure of rising construction costs. But scientists say the result, unless the situation can be turned around, will be a long-term disaster.

Plans to combat global warming generally assume that continued use of coal for power plants is unavoidable for at least several decades. Therefore, starting as early as 2020, forecasters assume that carbon dioxide emitted by new power plants will have to be captured and stored underground, to cut down on the amount of global-warming gases in the atmosphere.
Yet, simple as the idea may sound, considerable research is still needed to be certain the technique would be safe, effective and affordable.

Scientists need to figure out which kinds of rock and soil formations are best at holding carbon dioxide. They need to be sure the gas will not bubble back to the surface. They need to find optimal designs for new power plants so as to cut costs. And some complex legal questions need to be resolved, such as who would be liable if such a project polluted the groundwater or caused other damage far from the power plant.

Major corporations sense the possibility of a profitable new business, and G.E. signed a partnership on Wednesday with Schlumberger, the oil field services company, to advance the technology of carbon capture and sequestration.

But only a handful of small projects survive, and the recent cancellations mean that most of this work has come to a halt, raising doubts that the technique can be ready any time in the next few decades. And without it, “we’re not going to have much of a chance for stabilizing the climate,” said John Thompson, who oversees work on the issue for the Clean Air Task Force, an environmental group.

The fear is that utilities, lacking proven chemical techniques for capturing carbon dioxide and proven methods for storing it underground by the billions of tons per year, will build the next generation of coal plants using existing technology. That would ensure that vast amounts of global warming gases would be pumped into the atmosphere for decades.

The highest-profile failure involved a project known as FutureGen, which President Bush himself announced in 2003: a utility consortium, with subsidies from the government, was going to build a plant in Mattoon, Ill., testing the most advanced techniques for converting coal to a gas, capturing pollutants, and burning the gas for power.

The carbon dioxide would have been compressed and pumped underground into deep soil layers. Monitoring devices would have tested whether any was escaping to the atmosphere.

Read More HERE

CO2 Capture Plan Moving forward

Wall doesn't like cap-and-trade system

Ont., Que. sign agreement

Cleaning up a dirty job

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

by Naomi Klein

In The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically. Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America's "free market" policies have come to dominate the world- — through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries.

At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq's civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country's vast oil reserves.... Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly out-sources the running of the "War on Terror" to Halliburton and Blackwater.... After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts.... New Orleans's residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened.... These events are examples of "the shock doctrine": using the public's disorientation following massive collective shocks — wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters — to achieve control by imposing economic shock therapy. Sometimes, when the first two shocks don't succeed in wiping out resistance, a third shock is employed: the electrode in the prison cell or the Taser gun on the streets.

Based on breakthrough historical research and four years of on-the-ground reporting in disaster zones, The Shock Doctrine vividly shows how disaster capitalism — the rapid-fire corporate reengineering of societies still reeling from shock — did not begin with September 11, 2001. The book traces its origins back fifty years, to the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman, which produced many of the leading neo-conservative and neo-liberal thinkers whose influence is still profound in Washington today. New, surprising connections are drawn between economic policy, "shock and awe" warfare and covert CIA-funded experiments in electroshock and sensory deprivation in the 1950s, research that helped write the torture manuals used today in Guantanamo Bay.

The Shock Doctrine follows the application of these ideas though our contemporary history, showing in riveting detail how well-known events of the recent past have been deliberate, active theatres for the shock doctrine, among them: Pinochet's coup in Chile in 1973, the Falklands War in 1982, the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Asian Financial crisis in 1997 and Hurricane Mitch in 1998.

Read More HERE

Politics of Bad Ideas: The Great Tax Cut Delusion and the Decline of Good Government in America

Province's goal is deunionization

Dr. Subba Muthu, The Leader-PostPublished: Thursday, May 29, 2008

Elections fought over union representation are institutionally different from political elections; employee-voters do not have the basic rights of industrial citizenship that the citizens of, say, Canada, have under the rights and freedoms of the Charter.
While the political system has the benefits of separation of powers and a system of checks and balances, the free-enterprise corporate system does not have such separations and checks. Such rudimentary statutory checks and other self-regulations are found, in practice, to be ineffective. They are like the proverbial watchdog that seldom barks, let alone bites.

Notwithstanding the Labour Standards Act, nonunion establishments are almost at the border of "employment-at-will". Corporate governance is presumed to be a purely private matter. The idea of elections, of voting, of employees' freedom of speech, are never considered. But when a union knocks at the door, employers suddenly prefer a full-fledged election process similar to that of a national election. They argue that because employees must be able to make "informed choices", the employer must have an equal opportunity to make the case against unionization and to persuade the employees that they would fare better under the existing regime of individual employment relations.

In elections over unions, however, every single vote is open to manipulation; it is standard practice for employers to exploit this opportunity. For example, managers may inflate the size of the bargaining unit to a level that is too large or too geographically dispersed to be organized. Virtually every dimension of the workplace -- walls, bulletin boards, meeting facilities, leaflet distribution, compulsory captive audience meeting, supervisors' one-to-one gentle admonitions with employees on the dangers of unionization, monitoring washrooms, coffee lounges and even parking lots become a forum for constant anti-union tirades. But pro-union information is prohibited and avoided like the plague.

This in contrast to election for public office, where equal time and equal access is guaranteed.

Read More from Dr. Subba Muthu HERE

Sask. rules out of date - Political Funds

James Wood, Saskatchewan News NetworkPublished: Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Saskatchewan's Tax rules on political donations are increasingly out of step with the rest of the country and should be significantly tightened up, says a former provincial chief electoral officer.

Saskatchewan is one of only four provinces to have no limits on how much a contributor can give to a party or candidate.

Meanwhile, on the federal scene and in Manitoba and Quebec, corporations and unions have been banned from making political donations.

Those two provinces are joined by Alberta in banning contributions from out-of-province. The Northwest Territories and Nunavut, where there are no political parties, have also banned outside contributions to candidates................

The Saskatchewan Party had a huge financial advantage last year, raising $4.79 million, with $3.02 million from corporate donors and $1.6 million from individuals.

The NDP, which had beaten the Sask. Party in fundraising in each of the three years previous, raised $2.28 million. Of that amount, $1.28 million came from individuals, $585,502 from corporate donors and $166,000 from unions.

Last week, Premier Brad Wall continued a practice of the Sask. Party in opposition by attending a $400-a-plate party fundraising dinner in Calgary and a private fundraising reception in Edmonton.

Kuziak noted that such practices make it even easier to drum up corporate cash but there is an even greater inherent problem with out-of-province fundraising.

"People that don't vote and don't have a right to vote and shouldn't be able to meddle in Saskatchewan provincial affairs can do so by funding Saskatchewan political parties. That's the big problem," he said.

Read More HERE

Sask. Party: Energy industry donations top $1-million

Sask. Party government refuses to disclose contract and correspondence with MacPherson Leslie Tyerman lawyer Kevin Wilson; Norris dodges questions

Working Harder for the Man

By BOB HERBERT
Published: January 8, 2007, New York Times

Robert L. Nardelli, the chairman and chief executive of Home Depot, began the new year with a pink slip and a golden parachute. The company handed him a breathtaking $210 million to take a hike. What would he have been worth if he’d done a good job?

Data recently compiled by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston offers a startling look at just how out of whack executive compensation has become. Some of the Wall Street Christmas bonuses last month were fabulous enough to resurrect an adult’s belief in Santa Claus. Morgan Stanley’s John Mack got stock and options worth in excess of $40 million. Lloyd Blankfein at Goldman Sachs did even better — $53.4 million.

According to the center’s director, Andrew Sum, the top five Wall Street firms (Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley) were expected to award an estimated $36 billion to $44 billion worth of bonuses to their 173,000 employees, an average of between $208,000 and $254,000, “with the bulk of the gains accruing to the top 1,000 or so highest-paid managers.”

Now consider what’s been happening to the bulk of the American population, the ordinary men and women who have to work for a living somewhere below the stratosphere of the top corporate executives. Between 2000 and 2006, labor productivity in the nonfarm sector of the economy rose by an impressive 18 percent. But workers were not paid for that impressive effort. During that period, according to Mr. Sum, the inflation-adjusted weekly wages of workers increased by just 1 percent.

That’s $3.20 a week. As Mr. Sum wryly observed, that won’t even buy you a six-pack of Bud Light. Joe Six-Pack has been downsized. Three bucks ain’t what it used to be.

There are 93 million production and nonsupervisory workers (exclusive of farmworkers) in the U.S. Their combined real annual earnings from 2000 to 2006 rose by $15.4 billion, which is less than half of the combined bonuses awarded by the five Wall Street firms for just one year.
“Just these bonuses — for one year — overwhelmingly exceed all the pay increases received by these workers over the entire six-year period,” said Mr. Sum.

In a development described by Mr. Sum as “quite stark and rather bleak for the economic well-being of the average worker,” the once strong link between productivity gains and real wage increases has been severed. The mystery to me is why workers aren’t more scandalized. If your productivity increases by 18 percent and your pay goes up by 1 percent, you’ve been dealt a hand full of jokers in a game in which jokers aren’t wild.

Workers have received some modest increases in benefits over the past six years, but most of the money from their productivity gains — by far, it’s not even a close call — has gone into profits and the salaries of top executives.

Fairness plays no role in this system. The corporate elite control it, and they have turned it to their ends.

Mr. Sum, a longtime expert on the economic life of the American worker, said he is astonished at the degree to which ordinary workers have been shortchanged over the past several years. “Productivity has been exceptional,” he said. “And for most of my life, the way to get wages up was to be more productive. That’s how our economy was supposed to work.”

The productivity gains in the go-go decades that followed World War II were broadly shared, and the result was a dramatic, sustained increase in the quality of life for most Americans. Nowadays workers have to be more productive just to maintain their economic status quo. Productivity gains are no longer broadly shared. They’re barely shared at all.

The pervasive unfairness in the way the great wealth of the United States is distributed should be seen for what it is, an insidious disease eating away at the structure of the society and undermining its future. The middle class is hurting, propped up by the wobbly crutches of personal debt. The safety net, not just for the poor, but for the middle class as well, is disappearing. The savings rate has dropped to below zero, and more Americans are filing for bankruptcy than for divorce.

Your pension? Don’t ask.

There’s a reason why the power elite get bent out of shape at the merest mention of a class conflict in the U.S. The fear is that the cringing majority that has taken it on the chin for so long will wise up and begin to fight back.

Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

SaskPower prefers Lake Diefenbaker for nuclear plant

SaskPower report names site near Elbow as preferred location for nuclear reactor

Angela Hall and James Wood, The Leader-Post and Saskatchewan News NetworkPublished: Thursday, May 08, 2008

REGINA -- The Saskatchewan Party government denied that the Lake Diefenbaker area has been picked as the home of any future nuclear reactor even as a 2007 SaskPower report naming a site near Elbow as the preferred location surfaced Wednesday.

The document, prepared under the previous NDP government, was leaked to CBC a day after Sask. Party Energy and Resources Minister Bill Boyd said in Calgary the government would welcome development from private sector nuclear company Bruce Power LP, which has recently expressed interest in Saskatchewan.

But Crown Corporations Minister Ken Cheveldayoff said Wednesday the SaskPower document prepared under the NDP was of limited relevance because it was based on the idea of the Crown corporation itself building and operating a nuclear plant, which the government has ruled out.

"It underscores some of the needs of a reactor and some of the places it would make sense in Saskatchewan. But on further examination it's a very preliminary study and I'm told before a reactor would be contemplated an extensive study would have to be done," Cheveldayoff told reporters.

He said there are numerous other potential sites for a nuclear plant in the province besides those mentioned in the report.

The 2007 report, which was prepared by Stantec Consulting, looked at potential candidates for a nuclear power plant either around Lake Diefenbaker or near Lac La Loche.

Read More HERE

Nuclear power splits Elbow residents

Gov't won't pick location

Expert favours Alberta over Sask. for reactor

Power politics

Project a long way off: Boyd

Defusing idea of nuclear power

Essential services: What is and Isn't, Across Canada

CBC News

The government of Saskatchewan is hoping to enact new essential services legislation that would require bargaining units and employers to determine at least 90 days in advance of a strike which workers must remain on the job and maintain services during a work stoppage. Following an April 2008 transit strike, the city of Toronto is considering making the TTC an essential service, forcing workers to remain on the job even in the event of a strike action.

What does an essential service designation mean:

Essential services are those necessary to prevent danger to life, health or safety and disruption of the courts. Employees who are designated as having essential positions must continue to provide services during a strike.

Who can and cannot strike?
Essential service designation is different from legislation that prohibits the right to strike. For example, across Canada police, firefighters, and hospital employees don't have the right to strike as stated in their collective agreements and their disputes must be settled through binding arbitration. But for most sectors considered essential, some workers can still go on strike while the employees whose positions are determined to be vital by their employer must continue to work.

Who decides what's essential?
The Public Service Labour Relations Act designates which federal public employees will continue providing service in the event of a work stoppage.
The Canada Labour Code ensures other federal services like telecommunications, railways, banks, ports and national security are staffed during a strike action.
Provincially, it starts to get a little tricky. Each province has varying legislation and collective agreements to determine what services are essential.

How does it work in each province and territory?
Nova Scotia recently passed the Trade Union Act that allows employers to designate essential positions during a strike action. Saskatchewan is proposing a similar act. Prior to 2007, neither province had any specific essential service legislation in place.
Manitoba enforces essential services through the Essential Services Act, which specifies which public sector employees must continue to provide service during a strike. The province considers services like the department of finance, air ambulances, community living and the department of highways and transportation as essential.

Quebec's Essential Services Council determines which employees are subject to restrictions barring them from withdrawing services completely. While public transit is not considered an essential service in Quebec, the council requires transit workers to provide normal service during rush hour and other times the council deems necessary.

In P.E.I. and Alberta, there is legislation that prevents hospital employees, the department of health and social services and police and firefighters from going on strike. Like many other provinces, including British Columbia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland, their essential service legislation allows employers to designate positions that will continue to provide crucial services while a strike is taking place.

Legislation in Ontario requires that Crown employees and ambulance workers have an essential services agreement in place before a strike can begin so that certain services can continue.
In the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, the Public Service Act specifies that services deemed essential must ensure a continuation of minimal service in order to protect the health and safety of the public. The act also calls for senior employees of power plants to remain on the job.
The Yukon relies on federal legislation.

Is essential service designation bad for unions?
Unions worry about the implications of legislation and say that potentially undermines their bargaining power and takes away the right to strike. Critics of essential services legislation complain that a continuation of services lessens public pressure on the employer to end the work stoppage, resulting in longer strikes. However, lengthy strikes generally end in arbitration, which tends to yield more favourable contracts for employees than negotiations.

Is essential service designation good for taxpayers?
While the retention of essential services is beneficial for the public, lengthy strikes that end in arbitration can mean a bigger payout for union workers, which can be costly for taxpayers.

Back-to-work legislation: When negotiations fail

Sport full speed ahead at Estevan Motor Speedway

Greg Harder, The Leader-PostPublished: Saturday, May 03, 2008

Estevan Motor Speedway is on the right track.

"We've been around since 2000 and we've basically run a full program right from the very first season," offered David Mack, president of the Estevan Auto Racing Association.

"We get a lot of visitors from out of town. There are a lot of dirt track fans from the Regina area and points north and east and west of us. The track is a 3/8-mile dirt oval and high bank, which means it's a very fast race track. The guys don't let off the gas very much. Sometimes with the bigger class of cars such as the modified late model sprint cars, they can just about go flat out all along this track."

The 12-event race season begins tonight at 7 p.m. and concludes Sept. 21 with a closing Enduro. The regular race days feature four classes: Pure stock, mini sprint, street stock and modified.

The schedule also includes four special events beginning July 7 with a stop on the International Motor Contest Association (IMCA) Dakota Classic Modified Tour. It features racers from all over North America.

On July 12, the World of Outlaws late model series Wild West Tour is slated to make its first-ever stop in Western Canada.

"These guys are full-time professional racers," said Mack. "They are coming to challenge the late model drivers in our area. And by our area I mean about a six to 10 hour radius of Estevan, primarily going into the U.S."

Read More HERE

Sask. Party beats NDP in election fundraising

James Wood, Saskatchewan News NetworkPublished: Friday, May 02, 2008

The Saskatchewan Party took in more than twice as much cash as the NDP in 2007 as they romped to victory in the November provincial election.

Party financial statements filed with Elections Saskatchewan and posted on its web site Thursday show the Saskatchewan Party with a whopping $4.79 million in donations last year.
In fact, the party's take from corporate donations alone -- $3.02 million -- exceeds the NDP's total haul of $2.28 million.

The financial documents come just weeks after the Saskatchewan Party accused the NDP of being puppets of organized labour for its reliance on union donations -- $165,999 in the 2007 documents.

University of Saskatchewan political scientist David McGrane said it was a dangerous argument for the Saskatchewan Party to make given its dominance in business money.

"It's easy to turn that around now and say the Saskatchewan Party is in the back pockets of the corporations ... like it's been said before, people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones," said McGrane with a laugh in an interview Thursday.

Read More From Woods HERE

Also

Wall Accuse NDP of favouring Labour Unions

SaskPower posts profit

Bruce Johnstone, The Leader-PostPublished: Wednesday, April 30, 2008

SaskPower posted a $138-million profit in 2007, thanks to record peak load, customer hook-ups and service applications, and is expected to show another $130-million profit in 2008.
But the utility's record results don't necessarily mean that SaskPower customers will be spared a rate increase in 2008.

Rising natural gas prices, unpredictable hydroelectricity supply and large capital budgets could see the Crown corporation applying for a rate increase this fall.

A five-per-cent increase in the fall is quite reasonable and is not out of the question,'' Crown Corporations Minister Ken Cheveldayoff told reporters Tuesday following the release of SaskPower's 2007 results.

"The last increase was 4.3 per cent in February of 2007, so we will take a long, hard look at it,'' Cheveldayoff said. "If rates do increase, we'll be able to provide the business plan to support that.''

Cheveldayoff stressed that the company will look at cost factors, like natural gas prices, which have risen to $10 per gigajoule (GJ) from the forecast level of $8 per GJ. Natural gas represents about 17 per cent of SaskPower's annual $500-million fuel and purchased power costs.

In addition, the amount of mountain run-off, which affects the availability of hydroelectric power, will remain an unknown until after the second quarter. "It's a too early to say,'' Cheveldayoff said of any decision on rates. "If we have strong run-of from the west, as well as natural gas prices go down from where they are now, that increase may not be entirely necessary.''

But SaskPower is proposing to add or replace 2,800 megawatts (MW) of electrical generation capacity by 2030, which will require a large capital spending program over the next 20 to 30 years. SaskPower currently has installed capacity of just over 3,200 MW, as well as 454 MW of generating capacity from other sources.

Read More From Johnstone HERE

More riches flow into Sask.

Belle Plaine ideal for plant: report

Neil Scott, The Leader-PostPublished: Friday, April 25, 2008

Belle Plaine would be the right location for a $4-billion polygeneration plant, according to a report submitted to the province by TransCanada Energy Ltd.

The "project description'' report was submitted by TransCanada Energy this week as part of an environmental assessment analysis of the project.

"The proposed site offers the right location, infrastructure and customer characteristics to make development like this possible,'' the report said.

The site "is one of the few sites in North America that could support the development and operation of a world class polygeneration plant,'' said the report, which was submitted to the Environmental Assessment Branch of Saskatchewan Environment.

The project would convert petroleum coke, likely obtained from northern Alberta, into 300 megawatts of electricity as well as into hydrogen, nitrogen, steam and carbon dioxide for industrial use.

"It is a great environmental story,'' said John Jenkins, the commercial manager for the Belle Plaine project.

The $4-billion project would also be the largest in the province's history in terms of capital investment, Jenkins said.

Read More From Scott HERE

Why we're stuck with insane prices

Forget supply and demand. We're now seeing scarcity economics at work -- what happens when buyers fear they won't get what they need at any price.

By Jim Jubak April 29, 2008


If you think prices have become insane, you're right. But insanity rules markets for everything from oil to rice right now. In fact, insanity is the new "normal."
For example, why should oil sell for $119 a barrel, a whopping $55 a barrel, or 86%, higher than it did last April?

It's like the United States is suddenly out of oil, right? March crude oil reserves in the U.S. were actually 2.4 million barrels higher than reserves in February and only a trifling 3.4% lower than reserves in March 2007, according to the Energy Information Administration. An 86% jump in oil prices because reserves fell by 3.4%? I don't think so.

The global picture is similar. Global oil stocks held by developed economies came to 2.58 billion barrels at the end of March -- pretty much the same as at the end of 2007.

Global supply and demand is tight, with the latest projections from the International Energy Agency showing supply at 87.3 million barrels a day and demand at 87.2 million barrels. Tight, but supply is still ahead of demand.

Don't stop with oil prices, though. Look at rice, which recently cracked $1,000 per metric ton. The price of export-quality rice is up 173% in a year, even though global rice stocks will finish 2008 about 1 million metric tons higher than at the end of 2007, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Or copper, which is setting record highs just about every day and has climbed in price by 30% so far this year. Or aluminum -- up 28% this year. Or wheat. Or corn. Or, well, you name it.

Why normal rules don't apply
We've all heard the explanations. Demand for this or that has soared due to growth in developing nations, increasing production of biofuels or whatever, and supply has stumbled due to miners' strikes or an electricity shortage or a drought in Australia.

But lots of folks -- I get e-mail about this every day -- don't buy these stories. They see small production shortfalls, but still substantial stockpiles, and ask how this adds up to a 100% increase in the price of oil or rice or wheat in a year.

Read More From Jubak Here

Charred Earth Examined as Carbon-Storing Option

Jessica Marshall, Discovery News

May 1, 2008 -- If only we could put all that climate-damaging carbon somewhere other than in the atmosphere. One idea is to make it into dirt.

According to new analysis, this approach could be a way to make energy and store carbon at the same time.

Plants sequester carbon in their tissues through photosynthesis, but when they die, microorganisms decompose them, releasing carbon dioxide, so the carbon removal is not permanent.

However, when plants burn in forest or brush fires, part of the carbon ends up as charcoal, or biochar, which is resistant to microbial attack and can stay in the soil for hundreds or thousands of years.

Biochar could be a useful long-term carbon storage option, especially because it can improve the fertility of the soil and enhance crop yields, according to Johannes Lehmann of Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. Lehmann proposes that plant residue or crops grown for bioenergy could deliberately be turned into biochar as a way to store carbon, while making energy in the process.

Biochar is made when it is pyrolyzed: heated with little to no oxygen. It is also possible to burn the resulting biochar for energy, which obviously produces more energy out of a given parcel of plants than putting the biochar back into soil, but it doesn't store any carbon.

Lehmann and colleague John Gaunt calculate that storing biochar produces 30 percent less energy, but avoids two to five times more CO2 emissions than burning biochar for energy.

Read More From Marshall HERE

Province ponders greenhouse gas law