{"id":64952,"date":"2019-07-18T06:43:27","date_gmt":"2019-07-18T04:43:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rss.nova-institut.net\/public.php?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.euractiv.com%2Fsection%2Fclimate-strategy-2050%2Fnews%2Feu-clarifies-funding-scope-for-co2-capture-technology%2F"},"modified":"2021-09-09T21:27:50","modified_gmt":"2021-09-09T19:27:50","slug":"eu-clarifies-funding-scope-for-co2-capture-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/eu-clarifies-funding-scope-for-co2-capture-technology\/","title":{"rendered":"EU clarifies funding scope for CO2<\/sub> capture technology"},"content":{"rendered":"

The European Commission has clarified how it intends to support carbon capture and storage (CCS), a key technology in the fight against global warming which supporters say will enable deep emission cuts in heavy industries such as cement, steel and petrochemicals.<\/p>\n

Future EU funding for CCS is likely to focus on transport infrastructure like CO2 pipelines that can collect emissions from several industrial plants, said Artur Runge-Metzger, director at the European Commission\u2019s climate action directorate.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know there will have to be a public subsidy for CCS to make it happen in the coming years,\u201d Runge-Metzger said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re preparing the ground,\u201d he told participants at a EURACTIV event on Monday (8 July).<\/p>\n

CCS technology involves capturing carbon emissions from polluting factories and burying them underground, usually in depleted oil and gas fields. The technology, spearheaded by Norway, was initially touted as a silver bullet to cut emissions from coal power stations but failed to take off as renewable energies became cheaper.<\/p>\n

Still, CCS is seen as one of the few options available to address\u00a0emissions from process industries such as cement and petrochemicals,\u00a0which are heavily carbon-intensive.<\/p>\n

In the past, the European Commission has poured money into CCS demonstration plants, splashing more than \u20ac500 million over the last decade into costly projects that ended up never seeing the light.<\/p>\n

Those projects were not commercially viable, Runge-Metzger admitted, citing high running costs as one of the main reasons behind their failure.<\/p>\n

Now, the Commission has changed tack and is looking at supporting entire carbon storage and utilisation value-chains that can benefit several industrial installations at the same time, Runge-Metzger told participants at the EURACTIV event, supported by Shell.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look at past Commission programmes, we were always looking at covering the capital expenditure\u201d of CCS demonstration plants or research and innovation programmes, said the German EU official.<\/p>\n

The next generation of CCS funding will \u201cgo beyond that and also look at operational expenditure,\u201d he told participants at the EURACTIV event.<\/p>\n

A key area of interest is pipelines and transport systems for CO2 that can serve several industrial installations, Runge-Metzger pointed out. \u201cIf you want to couple different sectors, you need pipelines,\u201d the official pointed out, drawing parallels with railway networks that link up different cities together.<\/p>\n

\u201cVery clearly, we will look at networks in some of the funding instruments,\u201d the EU official said, citing money available under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) to support CO2 pipelines, such as the one currently being developed by the Port of Rotterdam Authority. Similar CCS infrastructure plans eligible for EU funding include the Northern Lights project in Norway and and a hydrogen transport hub in the north of England.<\/p>\n

But national governments also have an important role to play, Runge-Metzger stressed. \u201cDon\u2019t expect that Brussels is going to solve it all. That is not going to work,\u201d he warned, reminding that national authorities are responsible for running the infrastructure networks on their territory.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom our end, we are ready,\u201d the EU official said.<\/p>\n

Green NGOs lukewarm<\/p>\n

Green NGOs are lukewarm about CCS, however. While they recognise that CCS will be needed to bring industrial emissions down to zero, they say other technologies should be given higher priority.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are easy to grab solutions around material efficiency, recycling and reuse\u201d which should be explored first, said Imke L\u00fcbbeke, head of climate and energy at the WWF\u2019s EU policy office.<\/p>\n

\u201cClean technology breakthroughs require further support before we look into CCS as the silver bullet,\u201d she stressed, citing the cement industry, which Swiss researchers said could cut emissions by 80% without CCS.<\/p>\n

Fundamentally, environmentalists are suspicious that carbon capture technology is being used as an excuse to prop up polluting industries longer than necessary. \u201cWe have a lot of questions in clarifying the exact role of CCS,\u201d said Imke L\u00fcbbeke.<\/p>\n

\u201cCCS for us is not at all justified to prolong the use of fossil fuels. We think the political will on deploying a transition to clean technology is the first thing we have to do,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Runge-Metzger partly agreed with L\u00fcbbeke, describing CCS as a \u201cresidual\u201d technology. But he also says CCS needs to be supported now if it is ever going to be deployed on a borader scale later on. \u201cIt\u2019s pretty clear that we will need carbon capture and storage\u201d in order to reduce emissions to net-zero in the coming decades, the EU official said.<\/p>\n

Need for speed<\/p>\n

Shell also emphasised the need to plan early in order to have industrial-scale CCS facilities up and running in the coming decade.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo sit there and wait, we\u2019re going to give ourselves problems,\u201d said Syrie Crouch, vice president at Shell in charge of venture development for the upstream oil and gas business.<\/p>\n

Overall, it took Shell ten years to deliver the Quest project, which tackles emissions from its oil sands business in Canada, Crouch said. And such a project was made possible thanks to close collaboration with local NGOs and government authorities in Canada, she pointed out.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo if we want to move in the CCS space, the first thing we actually need is a really tight working relationship\u201d with NGOs and governments, Crouch said. \u201cWe need the governments, we need regulation, we need legislation and incentives,\u201d she insisted, saying those could be both \u201cpositive and negative\u201d.<\/p>\n

Chris Davies is a British Member of the European Parliament from the Liberal party and one of the leading policymakers behind the EU\u2019s first attempt at deploying CCS. Speaking at the EURACTIV event, he said there had been \u201ceffectively no progress\u201d during the past five years on CCS at EU level.<\/p>\n

According to Davies, the oil and gas industry shouldn\u2019t be expected to solve the CO2 problem on its own. No company wants to be the first-mover on CCS, he explained, because there is no business case for it at the moment. \u201cThe advantages of being a first leader simply don\u2019t exist,\u201d Davies said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s up to policymakers to give a steer, it\u2019s up to policymakers to create a business case for CCS that industry can buy into,\u201d Davies stressed, saying that can be done by regulation or financial incentives.<\/p>\n

CO2 certificates<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need a certificate system,\u201d Davies said, so that avoided CO2 emissions can be registered and credited under the EU\u2019s carbon trading scheme. \u201cThere needs to be a source of revenue for member states to encourage this investment,\u201d he argued, echoing a proposal from Shell to deliver CO2 credits for captured emissions under the EU ETS.<\/p>\n

But Davies also attacked oil and gas companies for spending too little on CCS advocacy.<\/p>\n

Drawing attention to Shell\u2019s \u20ac21.4bn profit made in 2018, and to the \u201chuge salary increase\u201d the company gave its CEO, Davies said the oil and gas major \u201cprobably spends more money on the CEO\u2019s toilet than they do on CCS advocacy in Brussels. Because I assume he probably sits back and reads the Financial Times during this period of relaxation.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Davies said the criticism applies to other oil and gas companies, not just to Shell.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just get fed up with the oil and gas companies coming out with this greenwash,\u201d he exclaimed. \u201cI don\u2019t want to see possibilities, I want you to spend the money\u2026on advocacy campaigns for CCS,\u201d Davies said in reference to BP\u2019s slogan, \u201cWe see possibilities\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only reason we do climate change legislation\u201d and support carbon capture technology \u201cis because the IPCC says the world is stuffed if we don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

Davies\u2019s criticism echoes remarks by Miguel Arias Ca\u00f1ete, the EU commissioner for energy and climate action, who challenged oil majors to provide more support for CCS than they are currently doing.<\/p>\n

\u201cOil and gas companies are often seen as being close to the source of the climate change problem,\u201d Ca\u00f1ete said earlier this year. \u201cHowever, if thanks to their engagement, CCS becomes a proven and financially viable solution, they could become part of the solution,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The European Commission has clarified how it intends to support carbon capture and storage (CCS), a key technology in the fight against global warming which supporters say will enable deep emission cuts in heavy industries such as cement, steel and petrochemicals. Future EU funding for CCS is likely to focus on transport infrastructure like CO2 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572,5571],"tags":[10744,12296,12051],"supplier":[2317],"class_list":["post-64952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","category-co2-based","tag-carboncapture","tag-ccs","tag-chemicals","supplier-european-commission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64952\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64952"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=64952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}