Technological solutions for carbon capture and storage are advancing rapidly and will be more and more needed, experts agreed during a public hearing at the Parliament’s Committee on the Environment, Climate, and Food Safety. Legislation, however, is lagging behind as such solutions are technically illegal in a number of member states.
Wednesday’s public hearing at the Parliament’s Committee on the Environment, Climate, and Food Safety (ENVI) resembled a scientific conference rather than a political debate: dozens of graphs, tables, and comparative sets were projected, many of them full of expressions unknown to general public.
Solutions do exist: scholars
A total of six experts gave presentations—some of them online—on the topic of carbon storage at the committee meeting. Siddharth Joshi, research scholar from International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), defined carbon removal as anthropogenic activities removing CO2 from the atmosphere and durably storing it in geological, terrestrial, or oceanic resrvoirs. “As 1.5 degree target is slowly going out of reach, carbon dioxide removal is essential to mitigate climate change impacts (…) As nature-based solutions are slowing down, permanent geological storage is required,” stressed Mr Joshi.
As 1.5 degree target is slowly going out of reach, carbon dioxide removal is essential to mitigate climate change impacts. – Siddharth Joshi, research scholar from IIASA
The scholar admitted that at the moment high costs may pose a burden. “The costs of carbon dioxide removal need to go down and possibly to be supplemented with subsidies and carbon trading markets,” Mr Joshi urged.
Jonas Helseth, Director of Bellona, expressed a similar opinion. “There is a clear consensus across major EU energy models that the level of climate ambition achieveable in 2040 strongly depends on the amount of carbon captured,” Director Bellona stressed. He also added that geological CO2 storage is supposed to be the primary form in all scenarios towards 2050.
Delayed legislation
As far as content is concerned, the experts’ presentations did not meet any significant criticism from the MEPs present. MEP Peter Liese (EPP/DEU) aptly summed up the situation at the end of the public hearing. “It is increasingly clear that without carbon capture and storage and carbon dioxide removal we will not meet the climate targets (…) Unfortunately, it took a long time to many to realize this,” Mr Liese said.
We can hardly ask industry to decarbonize when the technologies needed are actually banned. – MEP Peter Liese (EPP/DEU)
Further on, the German lawmaker mentioned the key obstacle. “The legal conditions are not here (…) In many countries including my home country Germany, carbon stotage is legally prohibited. As a result, we can hardly ask industry to decarbonize when the technologies needed are actually banned. We must proceed swiftly in this respect,” Mr Liese urged.
Carbon capture, storage vs. CO2 removal
Carbon Gap defines carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a separation of CO2 from industrial exhausts coupled with the permanent geological storage of that carbon (applied, e.g., on cement, steel, power plants, chemical production facilities, etc.). When the origin of the CO2 is exclusively fossil or geological carbon (e.g., fossil fuels, limestone), then this action is emission reduction, not carbon removal.
CCS differs from carbon dioxide removal (CDR), but some carbon dioxide removal methods (e.g., direct air capture) may share the same capture processes or long-term storage infrastructure used for conventional CCS. Carbon dioxide removals can accelerate the reduction of net emissions (immediately), counterbalance ‘hard-to-abate’ emissions (near-term), and deliver net negative emissions (long-term). Carbon dioxide removals lead to the generation of ’negative emissions’, which are crucial in achieving EU’s climate goals.
