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While politicians look for economic and social solutions to global warming, industry is intrigued by the possibility of carbon sequestration — preventing carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels from entering the atmosphere.

Earlier this month, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT's) Energy Laboratory joined forces with six industrial partners to assess the options for sequestration. These include pumping carbon dioxide from power plants and factories into depleted oil and gas wells and the deep ocean, and planting trees to remove the gas from the atmosphere.

Through the newly formed Carbon Sequestration Initiative (CSI), MIT scientists and engineers will analyse various approaches, while also developing new ideas.

Current sponsors include Norsk Hydro from Norway, Total Fina Elf from France, and the US companies American Electric Power, the Ford Motor Company, General Motors and Texaco. More sponsors are expected to sign on, with funding of about $250,000 anticipated for the first year. The initial round of research projects will be decided at a sponsors meeting to be held at MIT in late October.

“This is not an effort to implement sequestration ideas,” says CSI director Howard Herzog, an engineering researcher at MIT. “We're just trying to determine its potential and identify the key challenges, so that we can make informed decisions when the time comes.”

Environmentalists are concerned that sequestration may distract from the goal of reducing dependence on fossil fuels. “Techno-optimism about sequestration could dampen motivation to utilize energy efficiency and renewable energy on the scale we need to,” says Peter Frumhoff, a specialist in global change at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

But Herzog argues that sequestration could be a bridge “that lets us continue using fossil fuels while we develop acceptable alternatives”. At the same time, he stresses that any strategies adopted must be environmentally sound. “We want to make sure we're not solving one problem by creating another,” he says.