Characterization of America’s “Engine Room” for Geologic CO₂ Sequestration

Venteris, Erik R.¹, McDonald, James¹, Solis, Michael P.², Barnes, David A.³, Carter, Kristen⁴, Lockhart, Catherine⁵, Radhakrishnan, Premkrishnan⁶, and Avary, Katharine Lee⁷

¹Ohio Division of Geological Survey, Columbus, OH

²Kentucky Geological Survey, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY

³Department of Geosciences, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI

⁴Pennsylvania Geological Survey, Pittsburgh, PA

⁵Maryland Geological Survey, Baltimore, MD

⁶Indiana Geological Survey, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN

⁷West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey, Morgantown, WV

Reducing greenhouse gases, while meeting the growing demand for fossil-fuel-generated energy, is dependent on rapid development of carbon-sequestration technologies. The Midwest Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (MRCSP) has been created to assess the technical, economic, and social merits of carbon sequestration. The MRCSP (one of seven regional centers formed under U.S. Department of Energy funding) brings together academic, industrial, and governmental partners from Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.

The MRCSP provides a unique and important opportunity for the development of carbon- sequestration technologies, in consideration that member states are a major source of CO₂ emissions and have enormous geologic assets for mitigation. This economically critical area represents 16% of the U.S. population and GNP and nearly 22% of the nation’s electricity generation. The large industrial and power-generating point sources in the region produce about 715 million tons of CO₂ annually. 77% of electricity in the region is produced from coal-fired plants. Technologies are rapidly being developed to capture flue gas from coal-burning power plants and to extract/compress CO₂ emissions into an injectable liquid.

The region’s diverse geology provides myriad opportunities for utilization or storage of CO₂. The region includes 3 major sedimentary basins, intervening arches, a coastal plain, and a fold-and-thrust belt. Such a range in depositional environments provides many sequestration opportunities. Huge potential exists for sequestering CO₂ in deep saline aquifers, deep unmineable coals and organic shales, and depleted oil-and-gas reservoirs. The MRCSP is producing regional geologic and petrophysical maps to support planning efforts and capacity calculations for the various sequestration technologies.