Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
5/24/13
A report released this week by a consortium of pro-carbon capture and storage groups calls on the natural gas industry to step up as CCS’ champion in Europe, arguing that doing so would both boost the urgency for CCS deployment and expand the future prospects for gas in an increasingly carbon constrained economy there. In the May 23 report “Moving CCS Forward in Europe,” the ENGO Network on CCS—which counts NGOs like the Bellona Foundation, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Clean Air Task Force among its members—calls for a new “proactive” strategy to catalyze CCS development in Europe, where the technology has sputtered in recent years due primarily to an uncertain economic climate.
The paper suggests that a single industry step up to claim the mantle of CCS champion in Europe to spur its development, but lamented that efforts by electric utilities and equipment suppliers to do so in the recent past have failed due to financial and political limitations. ENGO suggested that in today’s climate, the natural gas industry could be a good fit for the mantle of CCS champion if executives want to stay relevant in a low-carbon future. “Shale gas or no shale gas, the gas sector needs to be resolute in its support for a low–carbon economy, or risk receiving the same kind of direct action opposition that has taken chunks out of the coal industry,” the report says, adding that the support of the gas industry could help increase public backing of CCS. “Focusing more on gas rather than dirtier coal or lignite could also help make CCS more palatable to skeptical stakeholders,” the report says.
NGOs Hope to Salvage CCS in Europe
ENGO’s report is the latest set of recommendations from stakeholder groups looking to shape the future of CCS-related policy in Europe as lawmakers there reevaluate the continent’s current incentive schemes for CCS. After no large-scale CCS projects received funding during the first round of the European Commission’s clean energy funding competition (NER 300) and carbon prices on the EU’s emissions trading scheme dropped to an all-time low in recent months, the EC released a white paper earlier this spring asking for input on paths forward from industry stakeholders.
The ENGO report acknowledges how CCS is currently in a “deep hole” in Europe and that most previous political momentum has been lost. “What is supposed to be a critical technology for addressing climate change appears friendless,” the report says. “Policymakers seem at a loss as to what they are attempting to achieve, let alone where they might find the money required.” Instead, the report, authored by ENGO’s European members—Bellona, E3G and Norway’s Zero Emission Resource Organization (ZERO)—argues that the European Union’s cap-and-trade scheme, which the CCS market has primarily relied on for financial support in recent years, is not enough. Instead, borrowing from recommendations made in a recent Bellona paper, ENGO says CCS needs more “targeted” support from the EU on par with what renewable sources enjoy there. It calls on a two-pronged policy approach, including an EU-wide, legally-binding target for CCS deployment, under which member states would be required to capture a percentage of their total CO2 emissions by 2030. As an alternative, it says a tradable CCS certificate system for CCS could also be effective. The paper also recommends pairing one of those approaches with market-based incentive schemes at the national level such as grants, feed-in tariffs, emissions performance standards or loan guarantees.
In the near term, ENGO called for early investment in transport solutions and a storage infrastructure for clusters of large carbon emitters to build public support. “An immediate action must be for the CCS opportunity to be mapped, and available CO2 sources tapped to enable the rapid characterization of CO2 storage formations,” the report says. “Europe needs to invest in CO2 infrastructure and storage to catch up with the USA’s EOR networks.” It also says stakeholders must do everything possible to draw greater attention to the value proposition of CCS and the benefits it could create such as jobs, low-carbon industrial production and additional revenues from CO2 sold for enhanced oil recovery. “To move CCS forward in Europe, we need to look beyond the limits of the current bureaucratic imagination,” the report’s head author, Chris Littlecott of E3G, said in a statement. “Politicians and policymakers need to realize that CCS on industrial emitters and gas power plants is essential as we move to a low-carbon economy.”
