US-INDIA ENERGY DIALOGUE INCLUDES PLANS FOR CCS

Lindsay Kalter
GHG Monitor
10/5/12

U.S. and Indian energy authorities laid the groundwork last week for future collaborations on carbon capture and storage efforts. A group of high-level officials including U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, Deputy Energy Secretary Daniel Poneman and India’s Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai met in Washington, D.C., Sept. 28 to talk about potential areas of energy cooperation between the two nations as part of a U.S.-India Energy Dialogue meeting. In a statement, India said that CO2 utilization, which has been a major focus of DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy over the last year, was a topic of focus. “It was decided that the two sides would engage in further cooperation in this area,” the release said, though no other details were provided. DOE and the Embassy of India did not respond to requests for additional information.

India New to CCS

Despite discussing CCS during the meeting, India’s interest in storage technologies is still in its “very early stages,” Barry Jones, general manager for policy and membership at the Global CCS Institute, told GHG Monitor this week, despite the fact that the country has dramatically expanded its coal fleet in recent years as its economy has boomed. India’s Ministry of Science and Technology has funded some R&D projects over the last five years, Jones said, but the country’s involvement in CCS does not extend far beyond keeping tabs on developments in other countries. “They are certainly at early planning and scoping stages,” Jones said. “The big electric power companies in India are aware of CCS and are looking at what’s happening with technology elsewhere.” He added that energy efficiency and renewables have been India’s main focus of emissions mitigations.

According to Jones, there are two primary reasons for India’s reluctance to explore CCS: unsuitable land mass and the potential increase in electricity costs, particularly given the country’s strained economic climate. While the northeast and northwest areas of the country show some storage potential, large portions of central and southern India do not contain geologic formations conducive to successful sequestration, he said. Jones added there may be some storage potential around India’s oil and gas fields, though they are limited in quantity. Jones added that two of India’s power companies—Reliance Power and Tata Power—have joined the Institute in recent years. “I think it’s just priorities have been elsewhere,” he said. “A major drive for India as a developing country is economic development, so the economic drive in India is strong. But they are aware that clearly that needs to come with environmental sustainability.”