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Publish date: November 21, 2007
Written by: Eivind Hoff
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The new package of communications from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament, currently expected on January 23d 2008, will also include legislative proposals on energy efficiency and renewable energy.
Drafts of some of the communications are now being circulated for “inter-service consultations” within the Commission.
“We are very impressed by what we have seen of the Commission’s plans for regulating geological storage of carbon,” says Paal Frisvold, senior policy adviser at Bellona Europa.
The draft proposal covers issues such as monitoring of stored carbon, financial guarantees to cover liabilities, and exploration licences to search for suitable storage sites.
Under the draft communication dealing with support for CCS, future fossil fuel power plants in the EU may merely need to be compatible with carbon capture and storage (CCS) equipment. No date would be set for making actual installation of the equipment mandatory. The European Commission’s environment directorate (DG Environment) proposes to convince power utilities to deploy the technology primarily by awarding carbon credits in the EU’s Emission Trading System (ETS) to CCS plants for “avoided emissions”. Member States will also have the option of providing state aid for CCS. Bellona believes this is insufficient.
“As any new technology, CCS will at first be very expensive. Unless the carbon price in Europe sky-rockets, it will fail to promote CCS”, says Mr. Frisvold.
“CCS has the potential to cut global emissions radically through installation in a relatively small number of emission sources – mostly power plants. CCS technology is proven – it works and it is safe. This makes it an indispensable supplement to renewable energy and energy efficiency in the fight against climate change.
It is now only a question of scaling up in order to reduce costs. For that, CCS should be made mandatory for new fossil fuel power plants in the EU from 2020,” he adds.
Recent attacks on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant "mark the beginning of a new and gravely dangerous front of the war," the UN atomic agency's director general said last week.
After years of inaction, Germany is working on its Carbon Management Strategy to resolve how CCS can play a role in climate action in industry. At the end of February, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action published first key points and a proposal to amend the law Kohlenstoffdioxid Speicherungsgesetz (KSpG). Bellona Deutschland, who was actively involved in the previous stakeholder dialogue submitted a statement in the association hearing.
In the midst of a global discussion on whether natural gas should be used as a transitional fuel and whether emissions from its extraction, production, transport and use are significantly less than those from other fossil fuels, Russia has developed ambitious plans to increase its own production of liquified natural gas (LNG) in the Arctic – a region with 75% of proven gas reserves in Russia – to raise its share in the international gas trade.
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.