South Africa announced a plan this week to capture and sequester carbon emissions through the establishment of a center devoted to studying and implementing solutions aimed toward lowering carbon emissions in the country.

The announcement comes on the heels of a previous statement by South Africa’s environmental ministry that pledged an attempt to capture 5% of the nation’s carbon emissions, a promise that indicates the political, economic, and environmental importance of the cause to the national government. By better understanding the geology of the region, the South African Center of Carbon Capture and Storage can best figure out the methods needed to capture carbon with the available natural storage, which geologists estimate at 100 gigatons.

Fortuitous timing on the part of South Africa had the announcement being released to coincide with a statement by Lord Ron Oxburgh of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association, who urged leaders at the Energy & Environment 2009 conference to adopt more methods of carbon capture. He said that carbon capture technologies will become more and more important in the coming decades as China, India, and the United States rely more on their coal reserves.

Image: Carbon emissions will rise as coal is burnt when oil reserves stagnate