Pennsylvania wants to allow power companies to capture carbon dioxide emissions and put them into the ground.
Unlike trash disposal, carbon dioxide cannot be dumped ina landfill, shipped away or burned.
But some Pennsylvania lawmakers hope to find another place for the greenhouse gas that scientists implicate as the main cause of global warming.
They're looking to bury it.
Carbon capture and sequestration would take a stream of compressed carbon dioxide directly from electric utilities and pump it underground into depleted oil fields, shale formations and aquifers thousands of feet below ground. There, proponents hope, the gas will be permanently stored.
Pennsylvania's geology could store at least 100 years worth of the state's annual carbon dioxide emissions, according to a report released earlier this month by the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. Such an amount would be significant: Pennsylvania emits 1 percent of the world's annual carbon dioxide emissions.
Pumping millions of pounds of pressurized gas more than 2,500 feet below ground is not easy.