Due to potential limitations of renewable fuel sources such as geothermal, wind, and solar in the Southeast USA, the continued use of fossil fuels to provide clean, affordable, and continuous base-load energy may be essential for the prosperity of the region. If fossil fuels are to remain the mainstay of energy production, point-source environmental control technologies will likely be required to comply with proposed environmental emissions standards. Flue gas desulfurization is currently being commercially implemented regionally and carbon dioxide scrubbing with geologic sequestration holds promise for reducing carbon dioxide emissions.Carbon capture and sequestration are the separation of carbon dioxide from fuels or flue gas, pipeline transport, and injection into deep geologic formations (sinks). The Southeast USA has diverse large-capacity geologic sinks including saline reservoirs, coal seams, and mature oil and gas fields. The U.S. Department of Energy has created a network of seven Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnerships throughout the USA to help advance the technology of carbon capture and sequestration and demonstrate the geologic infrastructure to implement commercial-scale operations. The U.S. Department of Energy's Carbon Sequestration Atlas identifies the Southeast region as possessing huge storage capacity with geologic sinks located at or near large-scale stationary carbon emitting sources.
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