Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
5/30/2014
For the third consecutive year, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has presented clean coal technology and carbon capture and storage (CCS) with a “not on track” rating in its annual report Tracking Clean Energy Progress. The report, released last week, finds that “the unrelenting rise in coal use without deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) is fundamentally incompatible with climate change objectives.” To meet the climate change objective of limiting the rise in global temperature to 2 degrees, the IEA calls for the rapid development of CCS coupled with a prompt decline in coal use. While the report notes that coal remains the leading fuel in energy production, it states that development needed to improve plant efficiency as well measures to advance CCS technology need to be ramped up if the 2 degree goal is to be met while coal remains in the energy mix.
To bring CCS on track to meet global climate change objectives progress must be sped up, the report says. “Deployment of CCS in both power and industry is critical to address climate change. While progress is being made in demonstrating elements of capture, transport and storage the current pace of development must grow rapidly if CCS is to fulfil its potential.”
To correct the current conflict between the coal industry and climate change objectives, the report suggests that “new coal power units should, at minimum, achieve the efficiency of supercritical units and be CCS-ready to have the potential to reduce even further the impact of coal use.” This course of action closely resembles the proposed Environmental Protection Agency’s emissions guidelines for new-build coal fired plants, which would essentially mandate the use of CCS on any new coal plants. The EPA regulations have been widely criticized as a ban on new coal development. The study addresses the issues brought forth by opponents of the EPA regulations noting that the cost of CCS remains high and the technology has not been adequately demonstrated. To address these problems, the study suggests introducing CCS as a “solution to address CO2 emissions from industrial sources” and enacting near-term policies which are “supported by long-term climate mitigation commitments.” While stating that carbon pricing would be the most effective way to drive CCS technology developments, the report states that in the short-term it is unlikely that this path will be effective. An increase in the development of demonstration projects which would drive the cost of technology down and contribute to knowledge of CCS is called for, the report says.
Also mentioned in the IEA report are the ever increasing contributions to global CO2 emissions by China and, to a lesser extent, India. While investment in research and development of climate mitigation technologies, such as CCS, has been fairly substantial in some countries, this investment is doing little to curb emissions from other countries not well aligned to develop such technologies. The IEA report finds that there are 36 CCS projects in various stages of development in the world, of this 28 are in one of 34 countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). “In the 2 [degree scenario] in 2025, OECD countries contribute only one-third of the CO2 captured – additional demonstrations are thus needed in non-OECD countries. In the 2 [degree scenario], 226 megatonne CO2 per year are captured and stored by 2025, which means that the rate of capture and storage must increase by two orders of magnitude in the next decade to achieve 2 [degree scenario] targets.”
It is noted in the report that China, a non-OECD country, has made significant steps to that end. “China and the United States, the world’s two largest coal users, emphasized in 2013 further co-operation in cleaner coal use, pollutant control in pulverized power generation plants, CCS, and selected CO2 utilization options,” the report said. In a Center for Clean Energy Innovation report recently released it was suggested that “to fill the RD&D investment gap, the next round of international climate negotiations should offer the option to meet increasing government clean energy RD&D intensity targets in lieu of, or as a complement to, meeting carbon emission targets.” This would allow high emitters who for political reasons may not be able to sign on to emissions targets to focus on developing technology and thus continue to contribute to global climate policy.
