A team of collaborators within the Southwest Regional Partnership (SWP) on Carbon Sequestration developed an interactive software tool to help facilitate discussions involving the science, engineering, economic and policy considerations for a carbon sequestration pilot project.  This paper demonstrates the Integrated Assessment model, and highlights the ‘String of Pearls’ network algorithm used to develop a potential carbon dioxide (CO2) transportation network in sequence with existing infrastructure and speaks to the use of system dynamics in a government setting.
The ‘String of Pearls’ model framework can assess geological sink choices according to their distance from the point source (e.g., power plants), relative size (to maintain a useful fill lifetime for a project under consideration), relative distance from existing CO2 transportation infrastructure such as pipelines, and other salient project attributes.  The results indicate that the cost to capture CO2 at point sources is the largest component of the overall CO2 capture, transportation and storage system’s initial cost estimate.  The ‘String of Pearls’ Integrated Assessment model can help planners assess these issues using an integrated, systems view when deciding where to develop future carbon sequestration pilot projects.  The modeling process and the model itself are described in this analysis.