Phase I Overview

The Big Sky Carbon Sequestration Partnership (BSCSP) was interested in and sought to identify and catalog carbon dioxide (CO₂) sources and promising geologic and terrestrial storage sites. There are many geological similarities among Montana and Wyoming. Both possess extensive sedimentary deposits with saline aquifers – a promising geological storage target. Additionally, the region contains extensive fossil-fuel based resources. Idaho is home to the Snake River Plain basalts, which were thought to present a very unique opportunity for injection and mineralization of CO₂ for long-term storage.

In addition to geological storage, the Big Sky region has great potential for terrestrial carbon storage via no-till (NT) farming and other land use practices that increase soil carbon content. There are similar land use patterns and cropland practices among Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, and South Dakota. Thus, BSCSP was motivated to assess and catalog carbon sources and promising geologic and terrestrial storage sites relevant to the region.

Lessons Learned

The Big Sky Carbon Sequestration Partnership (BSCSP) region is a relatively low emitter of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and in particular carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. However, the region contains extensive fossil-fuel based resources, having more than 25% of the coal resources in the United States. Thus, BSCSP can play a unique role in designing and meeting future energy production in a way that addresses energy security, cost efficiency, reliability, and environmental stewardship. Calculation of the region’s gross emissions of GHGs was approximately 61 million metric tons of carbon equivalent. In Montana and Wyoming, emissions were found to be dominated by refining and other energy and heavy industries, and in Idaho by imported electricity. In South Dakota, GHG emissions arose mostly from livestock and because of soil management practices.

The current terrestrial sinks, including cropland, rangelands, and forestry, combined with the opportunities to expand enhanced oil recovery (EOR) in the region, offer an answer to near-term carbon storage needs. In the longer term, the potential storage capacity of the sedimentary provinces within the region are almost 900,000 million metric tons of CO₂.

BSCSP invested in efforts designed to help ensure that the opportunities and programs are cost-effective and competitive with other storage alternatives. The attention to the economic potential of these sinks (i.e., the “opportunity cost” of changing land use patterns; of using energy to capture, separate, and store CO₂; of conducting energy production in a manner that optimizes joint energy production and CO₂ mitigation plans) was a key strength of the partnership.

The geological similarities among Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, eastern Washington, and Oregon were clearly identified. There are also similar land use patterns and cropland practices among these states, South Dakota, and the Canadian provinces.

The groundwork was emplaced to provide an assessment of storage capabilities for CO₂ utilizing the resources found in the BSCSP region (both geological and terrestrial sinks). Geological storage capacities of provinces and plays (sedimentary rock types and large areas of mafic volcanic rock) and the capacity available for terrestrial storage utilizing land management practices and technologies (rangelands, forested, agricultural and reclaimed lands) were assessed.

The results of the assessment of the mineralization storage capacity of injecting CO₂ into mafic volcanic rocks (basalts) of the Northwest led to the pilot-scale injection of Phase II at Wallula, Washington.

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