Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
12/11/2015
PARIS — As negotiators debated whether the world should strive to limit global warming to 2 or 1.5 degrees Celsius, supporters of carbon capture and storage technology have a universal message: neither goal can be reached if CCS is not brought to scale. “If we want to achieve the 2-degree goal, if we want to reduce emissions, and that includes lower emissions past 2030 and beyond, that’s where CCS starts to play a very important role,” Philippe Benoit, head of the Energy Efficiency and Environment Division at the International Energy Agency, said Thursday at a side event at the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
The conference, which began Nov. 30 and appears likely to stretch beyond the scheduled Friday conclusion, has negotiators from nearly 200 nations attempting to nail down a new global climate agreement. The latest version of the text sets the goal of the agreement to limit global temperature rise “well below” 2-degree Celsius and to “pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5-[degrees Celsius.]”
The intended nationally determined contributions that have been submitted to the UNFCC and will comprise the bulk of the agreement would result in a global emissions plateau around 2030 and put the world on a roughly 3.4-degree pathway, Benoit said. “If that were our goal, the fact of the matter is we would probably not need to do a lot of CCS,” he said. “If we’re talking about a 2-degree goal and talking about actions through 2050 and the like, CCS should have played a much bigger role in the discussions.”
This message was echoed by two documents released during the COP – a message from the World Coal Council and a report released by a consortium of nongovernmental organizations. “A low emission technology pathway for coal is required. It begins with deployment of high efficiency, low emissions (HELE) power stations using technology that is available today. These facilities are being built rapidly and represent significant progress on the pathway towards carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS), which is instrumental to global climate objectives,” the WCC position paper says.
The report from the Environmental Nongovernmental Organization Network on CCS (ENGO) highlighted the need to embrace CCS in climate mitigation efforts. “Our organizations are conscious that, all-too-often, CCS is perceived to be a continuation of business-as-usual practices by fossil fuel interests. CCS has often been judged to be guilty by association, sometimes justifiably so. CCS, however, is a broad category of technologies that can be applied across multiple processes and fuels, with many different uses and values as the world pursues deep decarbonization over the coming decades,” the report says.
CCS on Industrial Sources Should Not be Ignored
Regardless of comments from Secretary of State John Kerry and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy at COP21 stating that the U.S. will transition away from coal-fired power generation, CCS advocates, including Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, were quick to highlight the technology’s potential beyond the coal industry. “I think we should keep in mind that there’s a substantial opportunity and need for capturing CO2 from industrial facilities, and that is in some sense going faster that coal plants because the capture costs are so much less,” Moniz said.
On a 2-degree pathway, Benoit said, half of the carbon emissions reductions achieved through CCS would occur on industrial facilities.
Senators Weigh In
On the other side of the Atlantic, Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D) called for increased support for CCS in a Dec. 8 letter to Kerry and Moniz. “As you enter the final week of negotiations – and begin to work out the details of a final climate deal in Paris – we ask that carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS) is appropriately considered as a carbon reduction tool and is included in any final policy to come out of the current discussions,” the senators wrote.
They requested the U.S. delegation advocate for three items: providing a thematic funding window for CCUS in the Green Climate Fund and using similar tools to highlight the eligibility of CCUS for these funds; recognizing the role of CCUS as a climate mitigation technology when updating the U.S. Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC), and encouraging other nations to do the same where appropriate; and finding ways in which the financial mechanism to be included in the agreement can be used to leverage private funding for CCUS projects.
