News
Publish date: March 15, 2007
Written by: Anne Karin Sæther
Translated by: Jens Chr. Bugge
News
The appointments of the Bellona staff means the Oslo-based organisation’s work will play a key role in forming the entire culture surrounding the development and implementation of emissions-free, climate friendly industry and technology across Europe, and eventually – via the platform’s example – the world.
In Bellona’s view, the new approach that must be adopted by industry involves carbon capture and storage. In fact, carbon capture and storage is one of three absolutely necessary measures needed to meet the worlds current and coming climate challenges, Bellona believes. The others are improving energy efficiency and continued and intensive research and development of renewable energy.
Frederic Hauge was unanimously elected ZEP vice-chairman Wednesday.
Bellona also obtained positions in all four work-groups that make up the EU Technology Platform. Paal Frisvold, advisor for Bellona Europe in Brussels, and Beate Kristiansen, the leader of Bellona’s Oslo-based energy division, both received leadership roles in their respective work groups.
“This is important for us. Now we will be able to represent the technology platform outwards and will have the opportunity to move the process even further,” said Hauge.
Concrete contributions
Bellona has been represented in ZEP since the beginning in June 2005. But due to reorganizations within ZEP, Bellona has filled a broader role.
So far, Bellona has contributed to to the formulation of several concrete suggestions to European climate policy. It was – among others – Bellonas Aage Stangeland who drew up the paper defining ZEP’s goal in reducing carbon dioxide emissions from EU’s power and processing industries by 56 percent by 2050.
The new energy and climate policy that recently was decided by the EU has been influenced by ZEP’s work in several areas. The goal of building 10 to12 pilot projects for energy production with carbon capture and storage – or the process of extracting carbon dioxide from industrial emissions and storing them in conditions from which they will not escape into the atmosphere – has been ushered in by ZEP.
Bellona strongly represented in ZEP
The ZEP agency consists mainly of representatives from the energy sector such as Shell Oil, Norway’s Statoil and Vattenfall and Alstom, as well as an assortment of scientists. The Bellona Foundation is now strongly represented as one of the few environmental organizations in ZEP. The other organisations participating are the World Wildlife Federation (WWF), the Climate Action Network (CAN) and Greenpeace.
ZEP itself, in conjunction with the European Commission, makes the appointments to the agency. Bellona’s strong showing on the Zero Emissions platform is therefore a strong endorsement of the organisation from the European energy sector and the EU itself.
“By working with this for eight or nine years, Bellona has an overview and experience very few others have,” said Hauge.
“On the other hand, we don’t have any special interests in this. We only work for the environment.”
New work groups
In addition to being among ZEP leadership, Hauge will also participate in ZEP’s new work group for pilot projects, which evaluates financing and technological choices in electing start-up energy projects.
Frisvold has been appointed as one of the leaders of the group that will work with policy and regulation issues. The main task for this group is to make sure that existing regulations do not stand in the way of carbon capture and storage, and it will work with both the European Commission and EU member countries.
Frisvold will also continue his work as a member of the ZEP’s coordinating committee.
Communication and technology
Kristiansen was appointed as one of the leaders in the work group for public communications. This group’s main goal is to ensure that relevant information is easy to access and that the notion of carbon capture and storage becomes a more understandable concept.
Bellona advisor Aage Stangeland will sit in the fourth ZEP group, which deals with technology. This group will pick up the technological work from ZEP’s last session and define needs in research and technology for carbon capture and storage.
“All these tasks contain some really huge challenges for Bellona in the coming time period,” says Hauge.
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In this news digest, we monitor events that impact the environment in the Russian Arctic. Our main focus lies in identifying the factors that contribute to pollution risks and climate change.