Bold steps needed to cut 80 per cent of CO2 emissions

Europe it is betting on a portfolio of new energy technologies, including carbon capture and storage (CCS), to create a low-carbon economy by 2050, but needs to improve its market intensives and rethink regulation to convince industry to invest in demonstration plants if it wants to achieve that goal, experts attending a Science|Business symposium say.

CCS technology involves capturing the carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted by power plants and other industrial operations and permanently storing it deep underground. Though CCS is ready for large-scale demonstration, the European Commission’s plan to launch 12 major demonstration projects costing up to €16 billion by 2015 is largely stalled for lack of investment. Europe has vowed to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80 per cent relative to 1990 levels.

Governments grappling with austerity budgets across Europe have not been willing to fund costly commercial demonstrations and industry does not view CCS as commercially viable in the absence of a significant CO2 emissions charge. Europe now risks a major delay in bringing CCS technologies to market, and the inability to tap CCS to hit its ambitious carbon reduction goals.

Global coordination

The EU needs to rethink its entire approach to CCS, according to Ernest J. Moniz, professor of physics and director of the Laboratory for Energy and the Environment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “The goal of 2020 for a convincing demonstration of CCS for commercial viability is probably already unobtainable,” he told the symposium. “We are trying to advance an overall programme structure for CCS that should be thought of as a relic of a different time – 10 years ago. The energy, economic and environmental boundary conditions are dramatically different.” 

Rather than trying to implement a dozen CCS demonstration projects in Europe, Moniz said the EU needs to work with governments in other regions to set up a “small number of first-rate projects, with global coordination and cost-sharing”, focused on answering the question: “What does an informed regulator need to know?”  

Regulation

There was a broad consensus at the symposium that forthcoming demonstration projects should be focused on proving that CO2 can be stored safely. “The big elephant in the room is reducing the risks on storage – storage is the unknown for most people,” explained Stuart Haszeldine, Scottish Power professor of carbon capture & storage at the School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh.

Haszeldine and other speakers also argued that storage demonstration projects are being held back by the need to comply with the EU’s CCS Directive, which places onerous criteria on the storage of CO2 and related liabilities.

On 27 April, Science|Business held the fourth in a series of high-level academic policy symposia focused on the energy innovation challenge, entitled Breaking the Deadlock – Getting Carbon Capture and Storage Technologies to Market. Summarising the discussions at the symposium, a resulting report pinpoints the challenges facing CCS and identifies some potential solutions. It sets out nine recommendations for policymakers and eight recommendations for business to break the current impasse.

Leading energy experts from academia, business, the European Commission and Member State governments debated how Europe could regain lost momentum in developing a truly commercial market for CCS. The event looked at case studies in countries leading the drive to commercialise CCS – the UK, the Netherlands and Norway – and explored policy measures that would give industry the confidence to invest in the planned demonstration projects and beyond, the report is available for download here.