ON THE INTERNATIONAL FRONT
The United Arab Emirates and Denmark signed an agreement last week to collaborate on advancing carbon capture and storage technologies. The agreemend was signed by H.E. Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, UAE Minister of State and CEO of the energy company Masdar, and Danish Minister of Development Cooperation, Rasmus Helveg Petersen Jan. 20. According to The National, an English-language newspaper published in Abu Dhabi, Maersk, a Danish shipping and energy company, could bring its TriGen CCS technology to the United Arab Emirates under the agreement. The technology would capture CO2 from a form of power generation in which electricity and water are also produced, and the captured CO2 would be used for EOR purposes. The agreement also outlines several other areas of collaboration among the two nations that include furthering renewable energy and sustainability. “The world must diversify its energy sources and accelerate cutting-edge technologies that enable societies to be more resource efficient,” Al Jaber said. “Increased collaboration is critical in meeting rising global energy demands and mitigating the effects of climate change. Solving these two challenges, however, must be viewed as an economic opportunity in order to attract private sector investment and to push the boundaries of technology.”
IN THE STATES
The former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Carol Browner, said late last week that she believes the Obama Administration is “on track” to address climate change and that the EPA will be able to adhere to a timeline to finalize a rule that would limit greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants. Although President Obama did not set an explicit deadline for finalizing the rule, the rule must be finalized before the EPA may finalize another regulation setting emission standards for existing power plants, for which President Obama has set a deadline of June 1, 2015. When asked in a call with reporters coordinated by the Center for American Policy, where she is a Distinguished Senior Fellow, whether the EPA’s timeline could slip given a more than three-month delay between when the Agency announced the rule and when it was published by the Federal Register, Browner said, “I have every confidence that they will adhere to this schedule and they will get the important standards in place … so that we can begin to see the kind of reductions that are going to be hugely important if we are going to address the challenge of climate change.”
