UK Sees EU-Wide Carbon Capture Incentive from 2008
Date: 06-Oct-06
Country: UK
The move would be a fillip for the oil, gas and coal industries, which are preparing to pile into a technology that could extend their lives considerably and fix their image by cutting their contribution to climate change.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) involves siphoning off and burying underground the heat-trapping gas, carbon dioxide (CO2), that is a by-product of burning fossil fuels to produce power.
The incentives would start under the second phase, from 2008-12, of the European carbon trading scheme, which puts caps on heavy industry emissions. It would be a first step to try to make it economic for plants to adopt this method of protecting the climate.
"Currently they would be treated as if stored CO2 were emitted. We want to make sure that they're fairly treated in phase 2, in some way recognising the storage element," said an official at the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs.
"We'll be working with the European Commission that they are not disadvantaged."
But no concrete plans had been laid yet to incoporate CCS into the EU emissions trading scheme, said Barbara Helfferich, enviroment spokeswoman at the European Commission.
"We're looking into ways of using carbon capture as one of the many ways to reduce emissions," she said.
Some energy analysts see the technology as the fix which will win the biggest emissions cuts between now and 2050, and so help avert potentially catastrophic climate change.
The technology is so new that still no regulations exist, for example regarding who is liable if the stored CO2 leaks.
The mooted EU measure would only be an interim step rather than a legal framework, in advance of global talks to perhaps include it under a list of Kyoto-qualifying clean energy technologies, and EU talks on its role beyond 2012.
Exactly how the EU exempts stored CO2 is under discussion.
In Britain up to six proposed CCS projects could qualify at coal and gas power plants generating some 4 gigawatts of power, besides other possible projects in other countries.
-- Additional reporting by Jeff Mason in Brussels
