UKCCSC News 22 March 2007

Hi Folks,

I expect you were all glued to your TV / newspaper / web browser yesterday, but just in case you missed the good bits, here’s an extract from the Budget speech:

Budget re-confirms CCS Demonstration

Mr Deputy Speaker, six months ago when we published the Stern Report on climate change, we set a framework for environmental action combining a call to personal and social responsibility, with European and international cooperation.

Since then we have secured support for a strengthened European carbon trading scheme on the road to a global scheme; a new agreement for 2020 on cutting European emissions by at least 20 per cent and potentially 30 per cent; and I can report also that we have also agreed bilateral partnerships with China on clean coal; Brazil, Mozambique and South Africa on biofuels; India on clean energy investment; Mexico on carbon markets; and Norway on carbon capture and storage. And the Secretary for Industry is announcing today that Britain will launch a competition to go ahead with our first British full-scale carbon capture and storage demonstration.

To find this, go to the URL below and search the page for “stern”:

https://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/budget/budget_07/bud_bud07_index.cfm

Secondly, a report entitled “The Future of Coal” is pro-CCS:

Led by co-chairs Professor John Deutch, Institute Professor, Department of Chemistry, and Ernest J. Moniz, Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems, the report states that carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is the critical enabling technology to help reduce CO₂ emissions significantly while also allowing coal to meet the world’s pressing energy needs.

According to Dr. Deutch, “As the world’s leading energy user and greenhouse gas emitter, the U.S. must take the lead in showing the world CCS can work. Demonstration of technical, economic, and institutional features of CCS at commercial scale coal combustion and conversion plants will give policymakers and the public confidence that a practical carbon mitigation control option exists, will reduce cost of CCS should carbon emission controls be adopted, and will maintain the low-cost coal option in an environmentally acceptable manner.”

https://web.mit.edu/coal/