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European Commission report says CCS is crucial to keep global warming below 2 degrees

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Publish date: May 13, 2009

Written by: Camilla Langsholt

BRUSSELS – Biomass-fueled plants equipped with CO2 capture and storage (CCS) will be crucial to keep the global warming below two degrees Celsius, says a new research report funded by the European Commission.

The Adaptation and Migration Studies (ADAM) research project has investigated EU climate mitigation and adaptation strategies with a €13 million grant from the European Commission and published its results this week.  

“The findings in the report underline what Bellona has been promoting for several years – the importance of a broad and quick deployment of CCS, first used in combination with fossil fuels, then rapidly moving towards capturing and storing CO2 from burning bio-energy,” said Belona Europa Director Eivind Hoff.

The EU’s climate and energy package agreed to last December "does not yet contribute in a fundamental way to making [EU] climate policy more robust", says the report.

To ensure the goal of keeping global warming to about two degrees Celsius, all emission reduction models analysed by the ADAM project showed that greenhouse gases must be stabilised at 400-550ppm.

Two technologies are highlighted in the report as crucial to this end: bio-energy and CCS. They are inevitable for the 400ppm scenario estimated to deliver an over 70 percent chance of keeping warming to within two degrees Celsius. In this scenario, most energy is generated by biomass-fuelled plants equipped with CCS by 2100.

The findings of the ADAM project will feed into the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fifth assessment report, due in 2014.

For more information on the report consult the ADAM web-site.