Companies warned on carbon capture

Age
Thursday 23/10/2008 Page: 2

THE International Energy Agency has told governments and resource companies to put their money where their mouth is on carbon capture and storage, warning that unless activity accelerates rapidly, it might not be a commercial option until after 2030. In a 266-page report released in Paris, the agency says carbon capture and storage (CCS) was the only technology available to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions from large-scale fossil fuel usage", with the potential to deliver 20% of the greenhouse gas reductions needed to halve global emissions by 2050.

Yet despite bold statements such as G8 leaders recently proposing to build 20 CCS largescale demonstration projects by 2010, it concludes "current spending and activity levels are nowhere near enough to achieve these deployment goals". Costs of projects have risen significantly in recent years, and instead of stepping up their efforts, public and private investors have pulled back, while no country has produced the comprehensive legal and regulatory framework needed to make carbon capture and storage commercially viable.

The window of opportunity is closing for the global community to cost-effectively address climate change", said the agency's executive director Nobuo Tanaka. "CCS technologies must play a key role, but first they must be proven in the next decade.

"If we do not successfully demonstrate CCS soon, it will raise costs for other climate mitigation options." The IEA is the energy counterpart of the OECD, set up jointly by Western governments as a source of expert advice on energy issues. In a recent report, Energy Technology Perspectives 2008, it urged the world to invest $US30 trillion ($A43.4 trillion) in a combination of CCS, renewable energy, nuclear energy and energy efficiency to meet the target of halving emissions by
2050.

Its new report argues that 20 to 30 full-scale CCS demonstration projects were needed to bring down costs and find a commercially viable technology. On current technology, it warns, the cost of using CCS for a coalfired plant is about $US60 to $US75 per tonne of emissions saved, putting it way behind wind or nuclear energy as an option. Australia, as the world's biggest coal exporter, has a vital stake in developing the technology But while several small pilot projects are under way, and some larger ones are being planned, no demonstration-size coal projects are planned in Australia until after 2015.