Politicians

It has been said that CCS is a political challenge because politicians must establish regulations and incentives to make sure that CCS plants are built. In general, world leaders are positive to CCS as a tool to combat global warming, but a lot of political work remains before CCS can be a reality. Below you will find information on how politicians regard CCS and what they are doing to accelerate its development.

There is no lack of political ambition when it comes to CCS. The G8 leaders have recommended building 20 large-scale demonstration plants for CCS worldwide. It is believed that the experience and knowledge gained from these plants will reduce the costs and risks related to CCS so that industry can include CCS when the build future factories and coal power plants.

Building 20 CCS demonstration plants will be expensive. It will cost approximately one billion euros per plant. Commercial companies are not willing to pay the entire bill. Therefore, substantial public funding is required to ensure that the G8 recommendation is executed.

There are several positive political processes taking place which ensure further development of CCS. For example, large budgets have been allocated for CCS research worldwide. Although scientists and researchers are asking for more resources to conduct this research, technical advances are being made continuously.

The next step is to ensure funding for the construction of CCS demonstration plants, and here the EU has taken a leading role. The EU is planning to use income from its emission trading scheme to fund demonstration projects.

The Norwegian government has also established funding for CCS. They have promised to cover the costs for the country's first two full-scale CCS plants at Mongstad and Kårstø, although no investment decisions have been made yet. In the UK, the government has also agreed to pay for the country's first CCS plant and a competition is underway to identify the most promising project.

Australia is also leading advancements in the field as they have announced their intent to establish an international CCS institute to facilitate building of CCS demonstration projects worldwide.

But gathering support for CCS is not always straightforward. There are a number of politicians that are skeptical to CCS. They raise some of the same concerns that the NGOs do, for example, questioning whether CO₂ storage is safe and whether public funding for CCS will divert funding from renewables.

Politicians are positive to CCS as a tool to combat global warming, but they also realise that a successful strategy to reduce CO₂ emissions from factories and coal power plants means that CCS plants must be built in developing countries and not only in the western world.

Countries like China and India have large CO₂ emissions. In China there is a new coal plant being built weekly without CCS. Chinese politicians recognise CCS as a vital tool to reduce their emissions, but they are not willing to pay for development of CCS.

Many developing countries claim that climate change is a result of huge greenhouse gas emissions in developed countries since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Consequently they argue that the industrialised countries must pay for development of emission reduction technologies like CCS and thereafter ensure technology transfer to developing countries.

The Kyoto Protocol was the first international agreement on reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, but when the protocol was signed CCS was not widely known as an emission reduction strategy. Therefore, CCS is not a part of the greenhouse gas emission reduction strategies in the Kyoto Protocol.

The most important upcoming political event related to climate change - and CCS - is the international climate negotiations in Copenhagen in December 2009. It will be very interesting to see whether or not the negotiators take the opportunity and decide to include CCS as an emission reduction strategy during these negotiations. Signals thus far indicate that there is a lot of uncertainty about whether or not CCS will be accepted as a emission reduction tool.

• The political situation of CCS
• How to deploy CCS
• Opinions on CCS

Copenhagen Climate Conference 2009