Old polluting companies push like crazy for CCS

An undated letter is circulating in the corridors of the Copenhagen climate conference, sent by the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) to the Clean Development Mechanism Executive Board.

IETA's membership includes many of the fossil fuel energy giants which have played such a disastrous role in the global high-carbon addiction economy of the last 50 years..

In the letter IETA complains about the Board's decision in September last year not to examine a proposal for a Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) project in Africa. The UN climate talks have not yet officially recognised CCS as part of the solution to climate change. Given how controversial CCS technology is, the decision of the CDM board makes complete sense. Nevertheless, IETA is pushing for CCS projects to be examined now on the basis of recommendations from some UN sub-bodies. This pressure comes in addition to industry's main lobbying goal: recognition of CCS in the Copenhagen deal.

At an event hosted by the Zero Emissions Platform (ZEP) in Copenhagen yesterday it became clear that the next five days are crucial in this regard. I asked the ZEP lobbyists two questions during the event and got revealing responses. Firstly, does it make sense that funding CCS moves faster than subsidies for renewable energy in the EU, when it is clear that CCS cannot contribute to the 2020 reduction goals?

ZEP's chairman, Shell executive Graeme Sweeney, responded that ZEP wants ”money to go the most appropriate projects” regardless of the technology used. In practice this means that CCS will get most of the funding since the European Commission admits a preference to large scale coal projects rather than small scale renewables, referring to administrative and other reasons. In practice, CCS has already won half of the funds in the EU's New Entrants Reserve (NER) and they are lobbying for more, leaving renewables struggling for funds.

My second question was if it is legitimate for the fossil fuel companies to be in Copenhagen lobbying with European tax payers money? For details on this, see CEO's new report on ZEP.

Sweeney replied that ZEP is a 'unique coalition of industry, governments, scientists and NGOs' and therefore it is appropriate for them to be here with public money.

Sweeney got assistance from ,Frederic Hauge, President of the Norway-based NGO Bellona, a tireless promoter of CCS. According to Hauge, CCS is necessary to combat climate change, therefore “we have the moral obligation to use all the resources availlable to make this option known”.

Bellona's European Director Paal Frisvold approached me to appease my concerns on this point. I told him that ZEP had moved far beyond its initial mission to advise on research policies and had become a fully-fledged lobbying campaign, so therefore the Commission should stop funding it. The response was that I should't be so dogmatic and that we're talking... only about 1 million euros after all

At the ZEP event, IPCC chairman R. K. Pachauri agreed that renewable energy is clearly more reliable since there is no concerns about leakage or durability as there is with CCS. He said that CCS would be a parallel project used until the onground renewable sources become more attractive economically. But he also believes 'coal will always be used'.

CCS, according to ZEP, will start contributing only after 2020. Shell's Sweeney said that history shows that energy technologies need at least 25 years between their conception and reaching 1% of the global energy mix. So, in reality it might be much longer untill CCS makes a substantial contribution to reducing CO2.

These long term scenarios do not fit with the need of urgent reduction before 2020 and would mean wasting money on an uncertain experiment. The only thing they will surely achieve is to preserve the dominant position of the old fossil fuel companies for another 40 or 50 years more.