In a letter to British newspaper The Guardian, British energy and climate minister Chris Huhne insisted that he is still considering an Emission Performance Standard (EPS) for CO2, contrary to a media report published by the newspaper on August 16 which suggested the government was abandoning the idea.

The Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP) research staff have prepared an informative and up-to-date summary of Emissions Performance Standards (EPS) that have been adopted by various states in the United States, entitled “Emission Performance Standards in Selected States”.

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced on August 11th his decision to award $21.3 million (€16.5 million) to 15 projects to develop technologies aimed at safely and economically storing carbon dioxide in geologic formations. According to Chu, this funding decision is part of the US administration’s commitment to ‘lead the world in carbon capture and storage technology’.

US president Obama’s ’Interagency Task Force on CCS’ delivered on August 12 a report describing a series of recommendations to the president on overcoming the barriers to the ’widespread, cost-effective deployment of CCS within 10 years’. According to the report a price on carbon as well as public funding are key towards achieving timely commercial viability of CCS.

A fresh report from the Wupperthal institute carried out for the German ministry of environment confirms that CCS in Germany should focus more on curbing emissions from industry and biomass, as opposed to on coal-fired power plants only.

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu and U.S. Senator Dick Durbin announced on August 5th the awarding of $1 billion (€750 million) in Recovery Act funding to the FutureGen alliance for the implementation of a pioneering CO2 capture and storage (CCS) project in Illinois using oxy-combustion technology. This move aims to establish the US as ‘a leading player in an important part of the global clean energy economy’.

A roundtable event on CO2 capture and storage (CCS) deployment in Hungary was held on June 21 in Budapest. More than 30 participants representing governmental departments, major power companies, environmental NGOs and research institutions gathered to discuss essential issues such as CCS safety, long-term responsibility, and economic efficiency.

The Australian government has announced that a total of 5 million AUD (3.5 million euro) will be awarded to developing a system whereby wastewater and CO2 from fossil-fuel power plants are used to produce algae that is, in turn, used to produce biofuels and animal feed.

TPG Capital, one of the biggest private equity investment firms in the world, announced earlier this month that it will provide backing for engineering company 2Co Energy Limited in the areas of CO2 capture and storage (CCS) and enhanced oil recovery (EOR).

In a decisive move towards the EU’s goal of a low-carbon economy, the European Commission has adopted a proposal to ban state aid to loss-making hard coal mines in Member States (MS) by October 2014. Any mines operating in the meantime can receive state aid only if they hold a definitive closure plan. This is a significant improvement from the draft proposal presented by the Commission’s competition department last month.

The exploration of the subsurface structures has started as part of the first experimental CO2 storage plant in Spain. The exploration involves a seismic survey at a depth of 1500 metres and covering 35 km2 in the northern region of Hontomín, Burgos. This is a preliminary step to decide the exact location for the construction of the first pilot plant to demonstrate the technology for the geological storage of CO2 in deep saline aquifers.

The Environment Ministers of France and Germany and the Climate Secretary of the UK issued on July 14 a common announcement expressing their determination to press for an Europe-wide 30% greenhouse gas emission reduction goal from 1990 levels by 2020. This would indeed be an essential measure if the EU were to follow a path of sustainable growth and retain its competitiveness in the long-term.

A stakeholder meeting on the draft guidance documents under the EU Directive 2009/31/EC on the Geological Storage of CO2 – also known as the CCS Directive – took place on July 15th at the European Commission in Brussels. All four of the draft guidance documents intended to aid Member States as they transpose the directive into national law before June 2011 were presented and discussed. The guidance document on Articles 19 and 20 on Financial Security and Contribution produced the greatest response from stakeholder attendees.

In a common press release on July 14 the German Environment and Economy Ministers announced that they had agreed on the main points of a federal bill to regulate CO2 storage for the first demonstration plants for up to 3 million tonnes CO2 per year per project, with an upper limit of 8 million tonnes country-wide. This bill paves the way for the implementation of already planned CCS projects and goes a long way to address local concerns.

A new report published by Nature Geoscience examines the effectiveness of CO2 capture and storage (CCS) and the long term consequences of potential leakage of stored CO2 for the climate and the natural environment. It stresses the need for good site selection and monitoring to prevent leakage.

The Clean Air Task Force (CATF) released on July 1st a report making a number of recommendations to the Obama Administration's Interagency Carbon Capture and Storage Task Force to ensure timely realisation of the full potential of CCS.

Scottish and Southern Energy plc (SSE) announced its decision to go forward with a CCS project at its gas-fired power station at Peterhead, Aberdeenshire. This announcement comes right after recent advice issued by the UK Committee on Climate Change (CCC) to the UK Government for CCS equipment fitting to all new gas-fired power stations.

The Environmental Expert.com writes that the selections announced the 8th of July will focus on improving efficiency and reducing the added costs to electricity at power plants with carbon capture systems to less than 30 percent for a new pulverized coal plant and 10 percent for a new advanced gasification plant. The Obama Administration has made a goal of developing cost-effective deployment of CCS technologies within 10 years, with an objective of bringing 5 to 10 commercial demonstration projects online by 2016.

The UK's Department of Energy and Climate Change will launch the selection process for three new carbon capture and storage demonstration projects "before the end of this calendar year," as part of the UK's goal to have four CCS demonstration plants up and running by 2025.

China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) is building a carbon capture and storage (CCS) project in Inner Mongolia. The facility will be located at a coal-to-liquids plant owned by Shenhua Group in Ordos. CNPC is investing CNY210m (USD31m) in the project, which is scheduled for completion by the end of the year. The firm says the facility will capture 100,000 tons a year of carbon dioxide, to be expanded to 1m tons and 3m tons over two stages.

On July 1st, the Rotterdam Climate Initiative in conjunction with the British Embassy at The Hague hosted the first CO2 Capture and Storage (CCS) Seminar for the Regions in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The aim was to share best practices and experiences across the regions represented at the seminar in order to strengthen regional co-operation and ensure the successful development and implementation of CCS policies.

Professor Gary Shaffer from the University of Concepción in Chile compared the long-term consequences of CO₂ leakage for both ocean sequestration and geological storage. In this study, he aims to evaluate the effectiveness of these types of CO₂ sequestration in preventing global warming. He used a projection over 100 000 years for five scenarios of CO₂ sequestration and leakage with an Earth system model developed in the Danish Center for Earth System Science.

Canada-based technology enterprise CO₂ Solution Inc., in conjunction with its consultant Procede Group B.V., has found that the use of a specific enzyme can reduce the size of the CO₂ absorption column by over 90%. This finding can contribute to a significant reduction in the investment and operating costs of CO₂ capture.

The competition department of the European Commission is drafting a proposal to maintain subsidies to the coal industry until 2023. The prolongation of these subsidies, dating from 1965, contradicts the EU’s pledge to establish a low-carbon economy partly via a phase-out of fossil fuel-based energy production. Connie Hedegaard, European commissioner for climate action, and Janez Potocnik, European commissioner for the environment, have strongly opposed the draft proposal.

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu today announced on June 10^th that three projects have been selected to receive up to $612 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act - matched by $368 million in private funding - to demonstrate large-scale CO₂ capture and storage (CCS).

On June 22^nd, a seminar was held at the European Parliament during which the importance of mitigating black carbon emissions was confirmed. The attendees heard that reducing the creation of black carbon – commonly known as soot – is a short-term means to combating climate change that could be easily put into practice through additional legal action and stricter implementation of existing regulations.

Professor Andrew Mitchell at Aberystwyth University in Wales in cooperation with Montana State University have found that certain microbes can contribute towards the safe geological storage of CO₂ as part of a CO₂ capture and storage (CCS) project. They have found that the combination of biofilm and mineral deposits produced by the bacteria reduced the permeability of the rock by 95 percent.

The Polish Ministry of Environment has prepared guidelines for the adjustment of Polish regulations, transposing the EU Directive on the Geological storage of Carbon Dioxide (Directive 2009/31/EC) into Polish law (mainly into the national Geology and Mining Act). According to the proposed changes, the municipalities where the CCS projects take place will receive income generated by a fee imposed on the storage permit holder.

UK’s formal climate adviser the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) advised the UK Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Chris Huhne, to consider extending the UK’s Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) competition to include gas as well as coal demonstration projects, and to consider extending the proposed Emissions Performance Standard (EPS) to cover new gas plants added to the system from 2020.

On June 14^th the International Energy Agency (IEA) reported back to G8 countries on their past commitments to develop CO₂ capture and storage (CCS) by pointing out that the world is failing to meet its targets.

ATHENS – Powerspan released results of an independent review of its ECO2 post-combustion carbon dioxide capture technology conducted by WorleyParsons at its FirstEnergy Generation Corp.’s R.E. Burger Plant near Shadyside, Ohio. The WorleyParsons inspection team concluded that the 1-MW pilot test facility is “well-designed and instrumented.” The inspection’s results can be used to assess the performance and cost of the technology’s application in larger units.

ATHENS – A group of scientists, engineers and architects from the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the Columbia University Earth Institute recently outlined a plan to phase out CO2 emissions from coal use in the US by 2030.