Carbon capture and storage is a “vital lifeline to beat climate change”, according to an inaugural global CCS industry report which sets out the growing number of initiatives around the world aimed at accelerating the deployment of the technology. Launched today at the sidelines of the COP24 UN Climate Summit in Poland, the report notes there are currently 18 large-scale CCS facilities in commercial operation around the world, with another five under construction and 20 more at various stage of development. Today’s report points to growing and diverse support for CCS in helping to tackle climate change, such as in the IPCC’s recent landmark report on keeping global warming within 1.5C, and argues scaling up the technology worldwide can create new jobs and product streams. Moreover, there are no technical barriers to secure and permanent storage of carbon dioxide, it contends, highlighting recent studies suggesting the world currently has “at least a thousand years” of global CO2 storage resources. Writing in the report, leading climate economist Lord Nicholas Stern said people were increasingly beginning to see the importance of CCS as “the one technology proven to decarbonise ‘difficult’ sectors such as cement and steel and locked-in fossil fuel-based infrastructure”.
Business Green 11th Dec 2018 read more »