NEW IPCC REPORT A CALL FOR ACTION, CCS ADVOCATES SAY

Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
10/4/13

Carbon capture and storage supporters are seeking to frame the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) recent Fifth Assessment Report as a call to action for governments to invest in RD&D. The more-than-2,200-page assessment, released Sept. 27, stated in its strongest language yet that scientists are now more than 95 percent certain that human activity has been the dominant contributor to global warming, up from a 90 percent confidence level in a previous report released in 2007. The new report states that the warming of the climate system is “unequivocal” and that many of the observed changes over the last six decades are “unprecedented over decades to millennia.” “The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen, and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased,” according to the IPCC.

The report, the first installment of a larger assessment being released by the IPCC in several parts over the next year, says that atmospheric concentrations of CO2, methane and nitrous oxide have increased to “levels unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years.” The IPCC concluded that nations must drastically curtail their CO2 emissions in order to limit the effects of climate change. “Continued emissions of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and changes in all components of the climate system. Limiting climate change will require substantial and sustained reductions of greenhouse gas emissions,” the report states.

Advocates Call for Increased Investment

While the IPCC’s detailed plunge into CCS and other clean energy technologies is not expected to be released until April 2014, CCS advocates said the report underscores the need to invest in the technology. “The report is an order from the globe. An order for a new course in climate policies that require several full-scale plants for CO2 capture and storage, renewable energy, more energy, more money for climate change action in the industry and more electric cars on the roads,” Bellona President Frederic Hauge said in a statement. “It should no longer be possible to call into question the need for an ambitious climate policy,” he added.

The Zero Emissions Platform, a coalition of European utilities, environmental NGOs, equipment manufacturers and other energy stakeholders tasked with advising the European Commission on CCS RD&D, also called for urgent action from the European Union in support of CCS. “This latest IPCC report is a stark reminder of the urgent need for political action to reset the EU CCS program,” ZEP Chairman Graeme Sweeney, an adviser to Royal Dutch Shell, said in a statement. “CCS is an essential technology for the mitigation of CO2 emissions from large-scale fossil fuel use—not only for power generation but also for energy intensive industry.” U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz called the report a “watershed” in an interview that aired on C-SPAN last weekend. “It underpins the importance of the President’s climate action plan,” he said.