Karen Frantz
GHG Monitor
3/07/2014
The United States needs to take the lead on advancing carbon capture and storage technology, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said at a coal technology symposium held in Washington this week—arguing that other countries that are becoming increasingly reliant on coal to meet growing energy demands, such as China and India, will not. “Without American innovation, without American R&D, there will not be clean air coal around the world,” Warner said. “If we don’t have American leadership on this, it’s not going to be China and India and third-world countries, who are burning coal at extraordinary rates.”
Other panelists at the symposium, which was organized by Warner and Sens. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) and Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.), also urged global collaboration to help advance CCS technology. “We need to collaborate, particularly in emerging economies, directly on demonstrating CCS,” said Sarah Forbes, Senior Associate of the World Resources Institute. “The United States needs to play a strong role in that.” And Ben Yamagata, Executive Director of the Coal Utilization Research Council, said: “The rest of the world is going to use coal. … This is a global problem that requires a global solution.”
China Acting on Climate Change
But Forbes noted that although China is the world’s biggest consumer of coal, it is also among the countries that have taken tough action on climate change, and pointed to climate and energy initiatives laid out in its five-year plans. “During [China’s] 11th five-year plan—2005 to 2010—China succeeded in reducing energy intensity by 19.1 percent by mandating energy efficiency and shutting down inefficient power plants,” Forbes said. “Now we’re in the 12th five-year plan and China has set targets to reduce energy intensity and carbon intensity in the economy by 16 and 17 percent respectively by 2015, and that’s based on a 2010 target.” She also said that the state Council approved a national energy consumption control target that caps total energy growth above 3 percent each year through 2015. “With respect to coal specifically, the 12th five-year plan for energy development set an expected target for coal to account for 65 percent of total energy consumption, and that’s a decrease of what it is today,” she said. She added that China is showing leadership on “thinking through the regulations for how to do CCS and how to do it safely.”
Investment Lacking on the World Stage
Forbes said that globally there has not been enough investment in carbon capture and storage technology, although she said advancements have been made in developing frameworks for regulating CCS and ensuring that it’s safe. “Governments like Norway have put moratoriums on coal plants that don’t have CCS; we have emissions performance standards, portfolio standards at the state level in the United States; … tax credits for CCS and prices on carbon that include an allowance for CCS to be included in that,” she said.
She also said although there is an important role for governments to fund CCS projects, “at the end of the day, funding for research and development and providing a few tax subsidies is not enough to create true innovation and move technology through the innovation chain.” She said that one of the major barriers to deployment, rather, is uncertainty in long-term policy, and without policy certainty, industry will not be able to move past the innovation stage. “The cost of mitigation and our ability to meet climate energy goals are closely tied to when climate policy action is taken,” she added. “And time is running out. We need to get this right now and quickly if we’re going to make that window and if we’re actually going to achieve the 2 degree scenario.”
