International organisations

Building the first big CCS plants is a political challenge because it will require public money. It is simply too expensive for industry to take on the entire costs. Industry and politicians are therefore joining forces with large international organisations to find ways to make large CCS plants a reality.

The Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum (CSLF) is an international climate change initiative that focuses on promoting technological, regulatory, and political environments that can improve CCS technologies and ensure that these technologies become broadly available internationally.

The CSLF has 22 members, including 21 countries and the European Commission. Membership is open to national governmental entities that are significant producers or users of fossil fuel and that have a commitment to invest resources in development of CCS.

The CSLF has no budget for financing CCS projects, and therefore functions only as a meeting place where its members establish common recommendations for further development of CCS. The strength of CSLF is that it is a first-ever ministerial-level CCS forum, and its recommendations influence governments and industry worldwide.

Some of the activities performed by the CSLF are:

• Identify key obstacles for further technological development of CCS
• Identify potential areas of multilateral collaboration for CCS
• Assess regularly the progress of collaborative R&D projects and make recommendations on the direction of such projects
• Organize collaboration between all sectors of the international research community, including industry, academia, government and non-government organizations
• Develop strategies to address issues of public perception

The CSLF home page is a very good starting point to find information on ongoing RD&D activities worldwide on CCS.

Read more at the CSLF home site

The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a scientific intergovernmental body set up by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

The IPCC was established to provide decision makers and others interested in climate change with an objective source of information about climate change.

The IPCC provides its reports at regular intervals and they immediately become standard works of reference, widely used by policymakers and experts.

The aim of the IPCC is to document how human activity influences global warming and the global climate. They also conduct comprehensive studies on how to mitigate global warming. One of the main strategies they recommend for reducing global CO2 emissions is worldwide deployment of CCS.

In 2005, the IPCC published a very good report named Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage [1]. This is a comprehensive report covering most aspects of CCS. It is a few years old, so recent news is missing, but it contains all relevant information on CCS and it is an excellent starting point for those who would like to learn more about CCS.

Read more at the IPCC home site

The International Energy Agency (IEA) is an intergovernmental organisation which acts as energy policy advisor to 28 member countries in their effort to ensure reliable, affordable and clean energy for their citizens. In order to focus efforts on studying technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the IEA Greenhouse Gas R&D Programme (IEA GHG) was established in 1991.

The IEA GHG has three main activities:

• Evaluation of technologies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions,
• Promotion and dissemination of results and data from its evaluation studies,
• Facilitating RD&D activities

IEA GHG's work currently remains focused on ways to control and reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, and CCS is only one of many technologies upon which they are focusing.

Publications and recommendations from IEA GHG are widely cited by scientists and industry. Results from IEA GHG are also strongly influencing energy and climate policies worldwide.

Read more at the IEA GHG home site

The EU has established a forum of CCS expert that are directed to establish recommendations on how CCS could be further developed.

The new forum is called the European Technology Platform on Zero Emission Fossil Fuel Power Plants (ZEP). The forum was established by the European Commission in 2005, and it gathers more than 200 experts on CCS. ZEP is it laying down the foundation for EU CCS policies and research priorities. ZEP also provides input to EU institutions and EU countries on measures to promote CCS.

ZEPs work is a result of a wide-reaching collaboration between several different actors, within and outside the platform. Members include energy suppliers, technology providers, research institutions, environmental NGOs, and governmental authorities.

ZEPs objective is to make CCS commercial available by 2020. With this purpose in mind, ZEP is working to ensure that new fossil fuel power plants will be built with CCS from 2020 and onwards.

In order to achieve this target, ZEP has recommended that the EU should build 10 to 12 large-scale CCS demonstration plants by 2015. ZEP believes this is the best way to reduce costs and risks related to CCS. In addition, the knowledge and experience gained from these projects will ensure that industry builds their coal and gas power plants with CCS by 2020.

This recommendation is adopted by the EU. The European Parliament endorsed an Energy Package in 2008 that specified the EU energy and climate policy. Construction of CCS demonstration plants are a central part of this Energy Package.

This shows that ZEP is of significant importance for the EU strategy to reduce CO2 emissions.

Read more at the ZEP home site.
Read more about the EU Energy Package

• CCS and politics
• How to deploy CCS
• Bellona's participation in ZEP
• ZEP Fact sheet
• The EU Energy Package

1. Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage IPCC. 2005

• CSLF home site
• IPCC home site
• IEA GHG home site
• ZEP home site