Funds to help store carbon underground

The Australian Government has awarded almost $50 million to build a research facility that will help make cuts to Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions.

The National Geosequestration Laboratory (NGL), being built in Perth, will provide critical research to advance technologies to store CO₂ emissions securely and safely underground.

The new National Geosequestration Laboratory was officially opened today by Senator the Hon Chris Evans, Tim Griffin, WA Department of Mines and Petroleum, Dr Tom Hatton, CSIRO and Dr Linda Stalker, CSIRO. The project is worth $48.4 million for CSIRO and will promote the wider use of carbon capture and storage technologies to capture CO2 emissions and safely store it underground in stable geological formations. The group are at CSIRO’s MicroCT Scanner in the Rock Mechanics Laboratory.

The geological storage of CO₂ is a key technology that can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere by injecting the gases into deep underground rock formations.

We recently blogged about the Otway Project, which has shown that depleted gas fields can be used to store significant amounts of our CO₂ emissions.

The NGL will play a crucial role in achieving a low-emission economy for Australia and reducing its carbon footprint.