Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
10/10/2014
AUSTIN, Texas—The role that policy should play in the future of carbon capture and Storage was debated by experts at the International Conference on Greenhouse Gas Technologies, held here this week. Kelly Thambimuthu, chairman of the International Energy Agency’s Greenhouse Gas Research and Development Program, suggested that for CCS to move forward, the policy surrounding it must first mature. David Victor, lead author of Chapter 1 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group 3 – Mitigation of Climate Change, Fifth Assessment Report, however, advised against this, arguing that policy has not historically been effective in playing a lead role.
Thambimuthu said the advancements that have been made in CCS in the last several years and the milestones reached, such as the opening of SaskPower’s Boundary Dam CSS project last week, have signaled that the technology is mature and that is now time for policy to catch up. “CCS, as we all know, is a fully grown adolescent child, raring to go and unleash its full potential in mitigating CO2 emissions to prevent the dangerous impacts of climate change, however, it’s missing the actions of a responsible parent that would help unleash its full potential. That responsible missing parent is a global climate change protocol that has yet to be recognized,” Thambimuthu said. He said that there is hope that such a protocol could come out of the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference to be held in Paris. Thamimuthu urged attendees to push their policy makers to reach such an agreement. “In the mean time we in the CCS community have to really double our efforts and get across the message to our policy makers that CCS is just a whisker away from maturity, it’s missing only, and this is not technical maturity it’s missing, but it’s missing the maturity of policy by our leaders in rolling out CCS.”
Victor did not agree with this sentiment however, noting the shortcoming of past international policies such as the Kyoto Protocol. While it may look like the Kyoto Protocol is working, as the member states have in fact achieved much of what they agreed too, this is a thinly vailed bureaucratic trick, Victor said. “What we have are …. treaties that are designed to produce compliance by the countries that would have done that anyway,” Victor said, going on to say that a high level of compliance is not a sign that the treaty is working but that it “is a sign that the diplomatic community is extremely good at negotiating treaties that tell people what they would have done anyway.”
‘Policy … Doesn’t Supervise, It Follows’
Policy cannot, and should not, take a leading role in the future of CCS, Victor said, saying that that role should be filled by innovation. "Policy, especially international policy, doesn’t supervise, it follows. It follows real people doing real things. The kids basically tell the parents what to do … and the parents, when they see that something can happen, they then follow along with a set of rules.”
Victor also said that while the milestones that have been reached and the advancements that have been made are impressive, there is more to be done within the CCS community to facilitate the large-scale deployment of CCS technology. “I am more encouraged now about the prospects of meaningful international agreements on climate change than I have been in a long time but … we still have a tremendous amount of work to be done. The situation on the ground, in terms of actual emissions, not producing policy – diplomats very good at going to meetings and sipping coffee and producing agreements – but in terms of the actual on the ground situation is just extremely extremely weak,” Victor said.
