Carbon Dioxide is now widely accepted as the major driving force behind Climate Change. While energy efficiency measures and renewable energy sources are important instruments in limiting CO2 emissions, all countries, and especially coal rich emerging economies, will rely on fossil fuels for producing energy in the foreseeable future.

Capturing and storing CO2 in other places than the biosphere is ta promising technology for reaching a low carbon economy as stated in the EU’s Communication on “An Energy Policy for Europe” from 2007.

Carbon emissions and Climate Change

The EU and China currently emit around 30% of global CO2 emissions and thereby share a significant common responsibility for the future climate developments. Cooperation in cutting carbon emissions is an important area of international cooperation. To asure global temperatures rise less than 2ºC until the end of the century, emissions have to peak around 2030 and be reduced before 2050. (Changing Climates)

Fast growing countries like China will likely emit more CO2 than previously while they try to improve living standards. This rise in energy necessitates the quick introduction of clean production methods. Countries like China will likely still rely on coal for more than half of their energy production, inevitably causing more CO2 to be released.

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is designed to minimise the environmental impact of rising CO2 production through the capture and storage of CO2 in other places than the biosphere. Even with high levels of investment into renewable energies, countries like China will still likely rely on coal and other fossil fuels to meet their energy needs. Catching and storing CO2 is a sensible addition to low carbon energy production.

The simplest way of capturing and storing CO2 is in photosynthetic plants. However, the scale is limited by environmental considerations. Another option is storage in the ocean which is attractive to countries without other storage options, however the environmental impact of this method is hotly debated.

The most viable storage method may likely be geological storage. Storage possibilities include depleted oil and gas reservoirs, unminable coal seams and deep saline aquifers. Especially the first option has already been tested, most notably in the Sleipner (Norway), Weyburn (Canada) and In-Salah (Algeria) Projects. Estimates of known potential geographic storage sites indicateto be able to store the total global emissions of the next one hundred years.

(1)Coalbed storage - (2)Storage in Saline Aquifer - (3)Enhanced Oil (Gas) Recovery

Four steps are required for CCS:

1. Capture of CO2 from a power plant
2. Transport of the CO2 gas to a suitable storage facility
3. Injection of CO2 gas into an underground reservoir
4. Monitor the reservoir

Until 2015 the EU plans to have 12 large CCS pilot projects in place requiring an investment of 5 Billion Euro. This should help making the technology affordable around 2020. Concerns remain regarding the mobility of the injected gas, leakage into the active biosphere, public acceptance, site challenges and uneven geographic distribution of appropriate storage sites.

While a lot of research on CCS technology has already been done, an overall regulatory framework is still being developed.