International

Despite being the world’s largest carbon dioxide emitter, China is entering 2013 on a greener note as it prepares to gradually roll out cap-and-trade pilot programs in seven major cities and provinces beginning this year. 

Further banking on its budding image as an early leader in carbon capture and storage development, SaskPower launched an industry consortium this week aimed at sharing lessons learned from its Boundary Dam project. 

British utility RWE npower and Cansolv Technologies Inc. have commissioned a CO2 and sulfur dioxide capture pilot plant in Wales, the duo announced this week. 

The operator of Germany’s largest coal plant confirmed this week that it will not invest in any new coal capacity without carbon capture and storage technology. 

If Summit Power Group does not receive substantial funding from the U.K.’s carbon capture and storage demonstration program for its Captain Clean Energy Project in Scotland, the company is unlikely to move forward with the 570 MW gasification project, an official said this week. 

The oil giant BP and its project partners will continue CO2 monitoring work at their In Salah facility in Algeria despite last week’s deadly hostage situation at another gas processing facility in the country, a BP spokesperson told GHG Monitor. 

A member of the U.K.’s opposition party introduced an amendment to major energy legislation this week that proposes a tighter emissions performance standard for power generators that would essentially require carbon capture and storage technology while cutting off a ‘dash for gas.’ 

Carbon capture and storage advocates in Europe are hoping that plans to consider short- and long-term fixes for the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme this summer could help increase the price of CO2 offset credits enough to buoy the New Entrants Reserve competition, but many observers are pessimistic that the alterations could come soon enough to make an impact.

Poland’s only proposed carbon capture and storage project is not likely to move forward as planned without significant additional government assurance, according to an official from PGE Group, the utility pursuing the project. 

North America is outpacing the rest of the world—including Europe—in the development of large-scale carbon capture and storage projects, according to a new report.

Oil and gas company Husky Energy unveiled a new enhanced oil recovery project on the Alberta-Saskatchewan border town of Lloydminster at a ribbon-cutting ceremony late last week. 

Cooperative Research Center for Greenhouse Gas Technologies and University of Melbourne researchers began trialing a post-combustion capture technology this week that utilizes fossil-plant byproducts to produce sellable fertilizer. 

Developers of the three remaining publicly-funded carbon capture and storage projects in Alberta say they are confident that their business cases are favorable enough to bring their projects online in the coming years. 

The U.K. government this week continued its rollout of policies intended to usher the country’s power industry away from traditional fossil fuel-fired electricity generation and more towards carbon capture and storage and other cleaner-burning sources of power.

United Nations-sponsored climate talks in Bonn, Germany have regressed into a familiar pattern of finger-pointing and arguments over procedural issues, reports indicate.

Researchers began piping thousands of kilograms of CO2 into a bay off the west coast of Scotland this week as part of an experiment to help study the effects of a CO2 pipeline leak on marine life.

International climate negotiators headed into a United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change planning conference in Bonn, Germany earlier this week with the hopes of building on the modest progress made at the previous meeting in Durban, South Africa. 

Norway unveiled its long-anticipated carbon capture technology research center earlier this week, stepping forward on an investment the country hopes will ultimately accelerate the deployment of CO2 capture technology to ensure the sustainability of fossil fuel use while reducing carbon emissions.

South Africa’s cabinet approved a carbon capture and storage roadmap for the country late last week, local media outlets reported.

The Norwegian government said it plans on nearly doubling the carbon tax rate on the country’s offshore oil and gas industry, a move meant to cut greenhouse gas emissions that could also help spur domestic carbon capture and storage and other clean energy technology development.

An energy research group funded by the Chinese coal giant Shenhua Group announced here that it is joining the FutureGen Alliance, bringing new membership to an industry consortium that has struggled to attract new members in recent months.

The electricity generator TransAlta Corp. announced late this week that it is abandoning plans to move forward on its $1.4 billion Project Pioneer carbon capture and storage demonstration project originally set for a site 45 miles west Alberta.

An early supporter of carbon capture and storage technology that has seen its demonstration program slow in recent years, the Norwegian government is pinning its hopes of maintaining a leadership role in field on a new technology research center set to open next month.

The International Energy Agency said this week that nations are falling behind on clean energy investments—particularly in developing large-scale carbon capture and storage projects—at a time when minimizing the future effects of climate change is critical.

Mexico’s Congress cleared a comprehensive climate change law late last week, passing the world’s second legally binding unilateral emissions reduction scheme.

One of the project managers in charge of operations at the IEA-GHG Weyburn-Midale CO2 monitoring and storage project in southern Saskatchewan is set to present best practices gleaned from more than a decade of monitoring onsite enhanced oil recovery operations at the Eleventh Annual Carbon Capture, Utilization and Sequestration Conference next week in Pittsburgh.

The country’s top climate negotiator this week stressed that delegates negotiating a binding emissions reduction treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol will have to embrace a new “paradigm shift” as they begin developing a framework for the treaty this year. 

Officials from Norway’s carbon capture test center at Mongstad are looking to stitch together an informal network of international technology testing centers in an effort to unite a slowly expanding field that has seen little coordination and knowledge-sharing to date.

The discovery of a fracture near the world’s first CO2 injection site at Sleipner will likely not pose a threat to the safety of the emissions sequestered there but should help inform future site selection in the North Sea region, according to European researchers. 

Tamar Hallerman GHG Monitor 09/28/12 AT QUEST: ENVIRO GROUP SAYS PROJECT ‘GREENWASHING’ OIL SANDS DEVELOPMENT An environmental group typically supportive of carbon capture and storage technology has come out against Shell Canada’s Quest CCS project for “greenwashing” the expansion of western Canada’s heavy-emitting oil sands development. The Natural Resources Defense Council recently spoke out against […]