Climate change: hope for CCS?

One of the key solutions to climate change is carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) - separating out the CO₂ from thermal power stations and industrial facilities and burying it in the ground. But there have always been two problems with it: separating the CO₂, and burying it safely. Now the latter problem at least seems to have been solved. According to a study published in Nature (link here for subscribers), CO₂ can be safely stored underground for millions of years:

In seeking to answer the second question, scientists looked at natural underground reservoirs of gas. They found that carbon dioxide trapped underground had been stable for possibly millions of years because it dissolves harmlessly in subterranean stores of water which do not appear to have leaked any substantial quantities of the gas back into the atmosphere.

The researchers believe the study shows that it will be possible to inject vast amounts of carbon dioxide from power stations into deep underground reservoirs where it will dissolve in water and remain undisturbed for at least as long as it will take for mankind to completely abandon fossil fuels and generate clean, carbon-neutral electricity.

Which leaves us with the problem of finding enough empty natural gas reservoirs, and finding a cheap way to separate the gas streams. Plus of course the political problem of making polluters actually do it, rather than merely pointing at the nonexistent and unimplemented magic technology while continuing to spew their filth into the atmosphere. But that is "simply" a matter of setting a high enough price on carbon, to make it clear that the only alternative to sequestration is bankruptcy.

In New Zealand, we have a convenient empty natural gas reservoir - Maui - and a pipe network which connects it to every major thermal power station. Our polluters will have no excuse.