News
Publish date: May 12, 2014
News
The Boundary Dam CCS Project in Saskatchewan, Canada, will become the world’s first and largest commercial-scale CCS projects of its kind. The €1 billion project of SaskPower will see the integration of a rebuilt coal-fired generation unit with CO2 capture technology, resulting in low-emission power generation.
1 million tonnes of captured CO2 will be sold per year to Canadian oil company Cenovus Energy, which will use the compressed gas for purposes of enhanced oil recovery (EOR). Moreover, a certain quantity of the CO2 will be injected into a deep saline formation for permanent storage, as part of the Aquistore project to further research on this type of storage.
Bellona visited the Boundary Dam site in April 2013.
Kemper County Project, the second project nearing completion, will turn coal into combustible gas and capture 3.5 million tonnes of CO2 per year. This corresponds to 65% of the power plant’s annual emissions. This project was one of two selected in the US Department of Energy’s Clean Coal Power Initiative, which made it eligible for state funding. As with Boundary Dam, the captured CO2 will be used in EOR.
– With the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) recognising CCS as an essential technology to reduce the adverse effects of climate change, the progress made by these two CCS projects comes at a time when the need for the technology is more pressing than ever. SaskPower and Mississippi Power are now showing us the global leadership that Europe has been talking about for nearly a decade. It is time for action, and the EU must get back on track in deploying this crucial technology, says Jonas Helseth, Director at Bellona Europa.
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.