8 April 2011 | Luca Del Buono
Carbon, Climate Change, Energy, Legislation, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America

 

Global energy ministers agreed (7 April) to push for quicker deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) at the Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM) hosted by the United Arab Emirates.

Chris Huhne, UK Secretary for Energy and Climate Change, called deployment of the technology “tantalisingly close” but believes commercial rollout would still need “concerted efforts by governments to address legal, financial and technical barriers”.

Ministers at the CEM approved proposals by the Carbon Capture, Use and Storage (CCUS) Action Group chaired by Australia and the UK.

The CCUS recommendations include promoting policies that deal with the financial gap and risks associated with being an early developer of CCS projects and encouraging best practice knowledge sharing from such early projects.

Martin Ferguson, Australia’s Minister for Resources and Energy, said: “Australia is leading the CCUS Action Group with the United Kingdom to bring expertise together from across the world and to help governments and industry work together to advance CCS.”

The UK believes CCS is vital in the fight to mitigate climate change and recently announced £1 billion for the development of a pilot CCS project.

“There can be no solution to climate change and energy security globally without carbon capture and storage,” said Huhne.

This comment emphasises the country’s continued reliance on fossil fuels, echoing U.S. policy statements made by President Obama during his energy security address last week.

A recent International Energy Agency (IEA) report found that coal is the fastest-growing energy source and meets 47 per cent of new electricity demand.

As a result, the report considers CCS to be “critical” to achieving climate change goals – around 100 large-scale projects are needed by 2020 and this will require considerable policy and funding support from governments.

At the Clean Energy Ministerial, the Australian and UK governments, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Norway, South Korea, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates and the U.S. signed up to continue or initiate action in support of one or more of the CCUS recommendations.

The CEM is a high level global forum that brings ministers responsible for clean energy technologies together.

With London hosting the meeting next year, Huhne said the UK “will be pressing hard for substantial progress by then”.

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