With its accession into the Energy Community in 2009 Ukraine has had to take on the responsibility of implementing core EU energy legislation in the areas of gas, security of supply, oil, renewable energy, energy efficiency, and environment among others. Given Bellona’s extensive experience in these fields, and the geographical spread of the organisation, including Brussels – the home of the EU institutions and EU policy making, the decision was taken to actively assist Ukraine in the endeavor of reforming its energy and industry sectors.

Ukraine & CCS: Capacity Building through Energy and Climate Dialogue

As part of this initiative Bellona is hosting a series of fora to provide capacity building opportunities for the Ukrainian government by drawing on EU best practices. The first forum, which took place on 25 June 2015, focused on conventional pollution control, and aimed to facilitate an exchange between EU and Ukrainian experts in the field of emission reduction requirements; monitoring and verification requirements; as well as technological and financial aspects of the modernisation of coal-fired generation.

Supporting Ukraine in tackling the industrial emissions challenge

On 19-20 October 2015 Bellona Europa hosted the second of a series of events, this time focusing on industrial emissions and the associated to-be-transposed EU laws. Central to the EU’s Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) is Member States’ obligation of ensuring that operators of all combustion plants demonstrate CCS-readiness and the technical and economic feasibility of retrofitting the technology.

As the world’s first environmental NGO to have championed CCS as a crucial climate mitigation technology over two decades ago, Bellona mobilised its broad network of contacts from the CCS community to ensure a good coverage of legal, policy and technical aspects relating to the IED-, CCS- and the EU’s emission trading system (ETS)-directives. Among the EU experts featured representatives from the European Commission’s DG Energy, DG Climate Action, and Support Group for Ukraine; the European Parliament; CO₂GeoNet, a network of public scientific institutes specialising in the geological storage of CO₂; the ROAD CCS project, and ADEB, a leading law firm from Norway.

What the discussions looked like

The two-day working group meeting composed of a number of interactive sessions between the EU experts and representatives from Ukraine’s Ministries of Energy and Environment. Discussions were kicked off by the coverage of more-technical, policy and legal EU requirements for new combustion plants in terms of CCS-readiness and the requirements for geological storage of CO_2, followed by clarifications on the storage permit acquisition process and obligations in cases of CO₂ leakage and plant closure.

In addition to more technical questions, discussions also touched on aspects relating to compliance with the IED more generally and means of building interest and acceptance in CCS among the general public as well as policy makers. Current and planned CCS-projects in the EU were discussed, with a particular focus on the experience and future plans for the ROAD CCS project, as well as leading UK CCS projects. The Ukrainian experts were encouraged to reflect on their climate pledge (or so-called INDC) towards next month’s UN Climate Conference, COP 21, and consider the contribution of CCS in attaining the country’s CO₂ emission reduction targets.

The event’s agenda and speakers’ power point presentations can be viewed below:

Working Group Agenda, Oct 19-20, 2015, Brussels

DG CLIMA, European Commission_Maria Velkova_Presentation

Bellona_Keith Whiriskey_Presentation

ROAD_Andy Read_Presentation

AdeB_Ingvild Ombusdstvedt_Presentation

CO2GeoNet_Ton Wildenborg_Presentation

Bellona_Teodora Serafimova_Presentation