narrator: in belmont county, ohio, battelle is collaborating with firstenergy corp. who is hosting the project at their r.e. burger coal-fired power plant. steps away from the plant, crews work around the clock drilling a 2 1/2-kilometer or 8,000-foot, hole searching for reservoirs deep underground that can hold the plant's carbon dioxide. this is one of battelle memorial institute's research sites that are a part of the midwest regional carbon sequestration partnership, one of seven u.s. department of energy programs being conducted across the united states that are studying carbon capture and sequestration as one option for mitigating climate change. co2 is routinely separated and captured as a byproduct from industrial processes. but these capture technologies are not cost-effective on this scale and are being further developed. the obstacle for sequestration however, is not cost. for years, carbon dioxide has been pumped into the ground to enhance oil recovery. the challenge now is to test this technology for long-term storage. phil jagucki is a geologist on the

narrator: in belmont county, ohio, battelle is collaborating with firstenergy corp., who is hosting themidwest regional carbon sequestration partnership, one of seven u.s. department of energy programs being conducted across the united states that are studying carbon capture and sequestration as one option for mitigating climate change. co2 is routinely separated and captured as a byproduct from industrial processes. but these capture technologies are not cost-effective on this scale and are being further developed. the obstacle for sequestration, however, is not cost. for years, carbon dioxide has been pumped into the ground to enhance oil recovery. the challenge now is to test this technology for long-term storage. phil jagucki is a geologist on the project. jagucki: carbon dioxide is injected into the ground every day. but we want to put it in and keep it down there, and we need to find ways to monitor it so that we can verify that it's staying underground, that it's behaving as we intended or as we had planned. and so that's the knowledge gap that we have to fill. when is the last s