THE HAGUE: Capturing and storing carbon emissions from power generation holds the key to managing climate change amid rising use of polluting oil, gas and coal, an international CO2 conference heard in The Hague on Monday.
But the technology and infrastructure required to maximize carbon capture and storage (CCS) is being neglected due to high costs, an absence of business incentives and insufficient political will, experts also said.
Without CCS, we could not draft any (plan) that reaches the greenhouse gas reduction target, the International Energy Agency s (IEA) policy analysis director Pieter Boot told the gathering jointly organized by the Netherlands and Saudi Arabia.
One can argue that without CCS, climate policy will not succeed.
The conference was held as Germany was due to inaugurate Europe s first underground carbon dioxide storage site.
The site at Ketzin, outside Berlin, is part of a European project dubbed CO2SINK which aims to test whether capturing and storing carbon dioxide in subterranean rock is a viable way of fighting global warming.
It will pump up 60,000 tons of the greenhouse gas into porous, salt water-filled rock at depths of more than 600 meters (2,000 feet) over the next two years, the national geoscience institute said.
The first injection of gas below the surface was due to take place later on Monday.
Boot said world energy consumption was expected to rise 55 percent by 2030, of which fossil fuels made up 84 percent. CCS should account for 21 percent of the global aim to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
This would entail the erection of 35 coal-fired and 20 gas-fired power stations with CCS facilities every year from 2010, said Boot.
To this end, the IEA believed that governments must subsidize the initial steps, including building the pipelines to transport CO2.
You cannot expect that private companies will do this alone. This … is a litmus test whether governments are serious on climate policy or not. They can talk a lot, but this is the litmus test, because this costs money, said Boot.
Canada s Kevin Stringer said incentives for the business sector were lacking.
The industry is waiting … saying: Let s wait for someone else to develop the technology, the costs will be lower .
But Tone Skogan, deputy director general in the Norwegian ministry of petroleum and energy, said the incentive for business was one of survival in a world where global warming was a key concern.
If they want to be in business in the longer term they had better be in a position to deal with this.
Weiyang Fei, a member of the Chinese Academy of Science, said that with today s technology, CCS would add about 30 percent to electricity costs.
The cost of CCS is much too high at the moment, he told delegates.
Despite CCS investment requiring an estimated hundredfold increase, Boot said effective carbon capture and storage was viable.
But of course it has to do with the political decisions. In principle, it is possible. We must just start. -AFP
