Abby L. Harvey
GHG Daily
2/8/2016
The Paris Agreement, under which nearly 200 countries have committed to trying to limit global temperature rise well below 2 degrees Celsius, has reaffirmed the importance of carbon capture and storage in limiting carbon emissions, according to Brad Page, CEO of the Global CCS Institute.
The Paris Agreement’s expected goal was long been presumed to be limiting global temperature rise to 2 degrees ahead of the summit late last year. However, through the course of the negotiations in December, that goal was strengthened and is officially written into the agreement as “well below” 2 degrees with an aim to hit 1.5. “The real point about this is that CCS will be more important than ever in attaining an objective of 1.5 degrees,” Page said Thursday during a presentation to the Global CCS Institute Americas Forum.
Julio Friedmann, principal deputy assistant energy secretary for the Office of Fossil Energy, expanded on this idea, explaining that many countries have determined that they must take additional measures beyond what they are currently doing to meet their individual pledges under the agreement. “Most nations cannot get their [Intended Nationally Determined Contribution] without taking additional actions, without making additional investments. As they make those determinations, increasingly I think they will recognize the value CCS can play in hitting their INDCs.”
Page noted that climate models have long shown that CCS is required to reach a 2-degree pathway. “CCS turns out to be more important than any other technology in delivering both the required energy and the emissions reductions. Only four of the 11 models [the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change studied] could actually solve to meet the 2-degree target without,” Page said, indicating the several models simply do not add up without CCS.
Because of the more stringent target set forth, the Paris Agreement directs the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to prepare a report investigating how to get onto a 1.5-degree pathway. Page said he expects the new report to reaffirm the importance of CCS. “You cannot underestimate what going to 1.5 degrees means [for CCS],” he said. The IPCC report is due in 2018.
The Paris Agreement is comprised of a legally binding framework around individual Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs). As of Feb. 4, 188 countries have submitted their INDCs to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Ten of those INDCs submitted specifically include language on carbon capture and storage: Bahrain, Canada, China, Egypt, Iran, Malawi, Norway, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and the United Arab Emirates commit to some form of CCS support.
China, for example, has pledged “To strengthen research and development (R&D) and commercialization demonstration for low-carbon technologies, such as energy conservation, renewable energy, advanced nuclear power technologies and carbon capture, utilization and storage and to promote the technologies of utilizing carbon dioxide to enhance oil recovery and coal-bed methane recovery.”
Norway listed CO2 capture and storage among priority areas for enhanced national climate policy efforts and Saudi Arabia stated that it “plans to build the world’s largest carbon capture and use plant.”
Interestingly, the U.S., where several CCS projects are currently underway, did not include the technology in its INDC.
