Category: Carbon Capture and Storage

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Australia Carbon Capture and Storage

December 5, 2002 – Australian Government CCS support begins…

On this day, December 5 in 2002 the Australian “Prime Ministers Science and Industry Council” released a report called  “Beyond Kyoto- Innovation and Adaptation.”

This can be seen as the starting gun for Carbon Capture and Storage in Australia (it had already started moving in the UK).

[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 373ppm. At time of writing it was 419ishppm- but for what it is now, well, see here for the latest.]

The context was this – 

John Howard had managed to get an absurdly sweet deal for Australia at the Kyoto conference in December 1997. Nonetheless, Australia had delayed ratifying, and on World Environment Day in June 2002 Howard finally did what people had long assumed – he copied George W. Bush in saying “nope.”  That meant that he’d have to put forward some other”solutions” to a problem he did not believe (and still does not believe?) is a problem.

It didn’t hurt that the chair of the PMSEIC, his chief scientist, Robin Batterham, was only doing the job part-time, i.e. when he wasn’t working for … Rio Tinto.

Why this matters. 

CCS for energy systems is absurd (CCS might have a role to play for industry, if the business models can be made to work).

What happened next?

A really good critique of the PMSEIC report was released shortly afterwards – see here.

Large sums of public money in Australia got wasted on CCS, with really nothing to show for it. But it’s too useful a rhetorical move to ever be finally killed off… And so here we are, twenty years later…

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Carbon Capture and Storage Uncategorized United Kingdom

November 19, 2007 – Gordon Brown announces first Carbon Capture and Storage competition at WWF event

On this day, November 19, Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced the first CCS competition…

Carbon capture Government ministers have been giving speeches about the carbon capture competition for months. Mr Darling talked about it in the Pre-Budget Review. But Gordon Brown’s speech did not hesitate to bring it forward as a completely new idea. ‘I can announce today that we are launching a competition to build […] one of the […] first commercial CCS […] projects’.

He also mentioned the agreement between China and the UK to work together on Near Zero Emission Coal. He said it was the first of its kind. It was not. Australia and China signed a similar deal in September.

CCS had been swirling around for a few years by now. BP had wanted to get it going (with Enhanced Oil Recovery) at a site in Scotland, but Treasury wouldn’t give it the ROCs (renewable obligation certificates) to make the numbers add up….

Why this matters

If you know you’re history, you will know where you’re coming from…

What happened next

First CCS competition fizzles out in 2011. Second one, begun 2012, killed off abruptly in November 2015.  Third time lucky?

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Carbon Capture and Storage Technophilia

October 6, 2005 – carbon capture is doable…

On this day, October 6 in 2005, 17 years after the World Coal body said the greenhouse effect was greatly exaggerated, some people meet in Cambridge to discuss “carbon capture and storage”

This paper summarises the key points from a discussion meeting held at the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge, on Thursday 6 October 2005. The meeting was held in response to the UK Government Science and Technology Select Committee inquiry into carbon capture and storage. 

“VIABILITY OF CARBON CAPTURE AND STORAGE (CCS) AS A CARBON ABATEMENT TECHNOLOGY FOR THE UK: FEASIBILITY AND COSTS”

[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 377.19ppm. At time of writing it was 421ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]

The context was this – the Department of Trade and Industry had just published its “Carbon Abatement Technologies Strategy,” and carbon capture and storage was in the mix… The recent G7 meeting had also hyped it. BP was saying it could do this on its Peterhead facility. It’s all gonna happen, right?

Why this matters. 

Technologies go through a long ‘incubation’ period. Lots of workshops, seminars etc. By this time, CCS had already been talked about for a long time…

What happened next?

BP pulled out of the first CCS project in the UK in early 2007. In late 2007 the government announced a competition. That didn’t end well. They announced another. That ended very badly indeed. Third time lucky?

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Carbon Capture and Storage United Kingdom

September 17, 2002 – UK Government announces feasibility study into Carbon Capture and Storage

Twenty years ago today the first of many many CCS advisory panels was launched.

The Energy White Paper recognised the longer term strategic importance of Carbon dioxide Capture and Storage (CCS), as a potentially valuable contribution to the achievement of its target for a 60% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. This study was announced by Brian Wilson MP, the then Minister for Industry and Energy, on 17 September 2002 with the following objectives: 

■ establish the technical feasibility of CO2 capture and storage as a low carbon option 

■ define the potential technical, market, economic, public acceptability and legal barriers, and consider options for their solution 

■ establish the circumstances that could make the option competitive with other abatement measures 

■ consider the size of the potential contribution to UK abatement targets 

■ assess export opportunities for the technology 

■ define the role for Government in taking forward CO2 capture and storage

On this day the PPM was 370.69

Now it is 420ish- but see here for the latest.

Why this matters. 

How long does it take for a technology to take-off? How quickly do we forget?

What happened next?

Proposals, competitions, betrayal, more panels. And here we are…

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Carbon Capture and Storage Technophilia

June 25, 2002, 2003 and 2008 – CCS’s first hype cycle builds

On this day, June 25, across 6 years, we can watch a technology emerge from obscurity (see June 4 for how an issue goes through an arc).

Carbon capture and storage is the proposal to stop carbon dioxide molecules, released when you burn a hydrocarbon (oil, coal or gas), from getting into the atmosphere. I could go on, but I won’t…

On this day in 2002 the UK Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) held an “ Improved Oil Recovery” Research Seminar.

Then, a  year later the US, EU, 12 countries agreed to develop carbon capture technologies” – the grandly named “Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum” became a thing.

Then, five years after that, with CCS very high up the agenda in the UK,  a Shell-sponsored CCS supplement turned up in the Guardian  containing 14-articles, all focusing on CCS. Page 234 of Mander et al (2013)

Why this matters. 

Technologies build up a head of, erm, steam. Or they don’t. It takes time for things to emerge. Then they work, or they don’t, or they do something else.

What happened next?

CCS? It went away. Then it came back, as fantasies do.

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Australia Carbon Capture and Storage Coal

May 22, 2007 – “Clean coal” power station by 2014, honest…

On this day, May 22nd 2007, the Canberra Times reported on an announcement by two big coal miners that they were going to build a “carbon capture and storage” plant by 2014. Oh yes.

Dobbin, M. 2007. BP, Rio in clean coal power bid; Project based on Canberra research. Canberra Times, 22 May.

BP and Rio Tinto announced joint plans yesterday for a $2billion coal- fired power station at Kwinana in Western Australia that would be the first in Australia to capture and store its greenhouse gas emissions deep underground. The so-called clean coal station which could be completed within seven years would produce enough power to supply 500,000 houses.

Why this matters

When we hear the latest promises, we should

a) remember the old ones

b) think about hype cycles

What happened next

It. didn’t. happen. Because the taxpayer wasn’t willing to stump up….

Anon. 2007. CO2 trading no solution. Canberra Times, 27 May. L AST week’s announcement that BP and Rio Tinto have teamed up to look at building a ”clean” coal power station in Western Australia is great news. There’s only one catch. The project won’t go ahead if it depends on the key proposal to encourage clean energy contained in a report due to be handed to the Prime Minister on Thursday. This need not pose an insuperable barrier. But it suggests the Government will have to do more than simply rely on setting up a market for trading greenhouse gas emissions, which the report, from a joint business/public service task group, is expected to recommend. The idea is to issue a limited number of permits to release greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), which the Government says contributes to global warming. These permits will then be traded in a government-run market designed to create a price which is supposed to increase the cost of emitting high levels of greenhouse gases when products such as electricity are made. According to a spokesman for Rio Tinto, Ian Head, ”An emissions-trading scheme alone will not be enough to encourage the clean coal project in Western Australia to go ahead”

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Carbon Capture and Storage Technophilia United Kingdom

May 2, 2012 – CCS is gonna save us all. Oh yes.

On this day (May 2nd) in 2012 the UK government announced a “Carbon Capture andStorage” Cost Reduction Taskforce which would

“to advise the government and industry on the steps needed to reduce the cost of CCS, so that it could compete with other low carbon technologies in the 2020s.” (see also this press release).

CCS has long been the get-out-of-jail-free card for industry (esp oil and gas) and a lot of time and money has been spent on it. But it still ain’t here. Maybe this time will be different…

Why this matters

We need to remember that these salvationary technologies have fallen over repeatedly, and ask ourselves “gee, maybe we could focus on, you know, just using hella lot less energy?”

What happened next

CCS fell over, got picked up and dusted off, and is again flavour of the month.

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Australia Carbon Capture and Storage

Feb 25, 2007 – “Clean Coal Initiative” as move in game of one-dimensional electoral chess #auspol

On 25th of February 2007, with the Australian –  yes back to Australia – federal election, a matter of months away. newly-minted opposition leader Kevin Rudd and his shadow Environment Minister Peter Garrett of Midnight Oil are out there spruiking “A National Clean Coal Initiative.”

This the ALP needed because otherwise they couldn’t win Queensland, a major coal exporter. Clean coal had been a persistent theme or trend or meme – or bullshit, to use the Anglo-Saxon terminology – for 10 years. Nine years minus a day earlier, a clean coal CRC had been set up. 

“Anon. 1998. Tests for green coal. Daily Telegraph, 26 February.

RESEARCH laboratories where scientists will work to make Australian coal the “cleanest” in the world, will be opened by Premier Bob Carr today. The Ian Stewart Wing of the chemical engineering laboratories at Newcastle University form part of the co-operative research centre for black coal utilisation. The centre, partially government funded, was established in 1995 to carry out world class research to maximise the value and performance of Australian black coal resources.”

The unions were in favour of clean coal, certain elite business, environmental NGOs like WWF were at least making the right noises. Because otherwise you can’t make the numbers add up. Apparently, you can’t unless you radically reduce emissions in the first place which is going to cause economic pain and dislocation and interrupt the “we can have our cake and eat it story” that politicians need to tell. 

What happened next

Well, Rudd got elected. Garrett was a minister in his government before having to take the blame for pink bats. Garrett wrote a very good book about his time blue sky something and then returned to being the lead singer of Midnight Oil. I won’t repeat what Kevin Rudd got up to.

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Carbon Capture and Storage Energy Europe Industry Associations Technophilia

Jan 19 (2015) -Four utilities pull out of an EU CCS programme…

On this day, Jan 19, in 2015 “four of Europe’s biggest power utilities, represented in Brussels by Eurelectric, have decided to leave the European Commission’s CCS Technology Platform ZEP.“

The four were Germany’s RWE AG, France’s Electricite de France, Sweden’s Vattenfall AB and Spain’s Gas Natural Fenosa.

The ZEP had been set up in the mid-2000s as “a coalition of companies, scientists and environmental groups seeking ways to capture and bury heat-trapping carbon emissions mainly from the exhausts of coal, oil and gas-fired power plants.”

[On the EU’s “Zero Emissions Power Plant Programme”. See also 2011 article in Nature about Europe and CCS.]

Why? Well, money at stake. As a Bellona press release titled “Utilities feign interest in CCS to get public bail out” said

“Of the move, Bellona Europa Director Jonas Helseth said: – In their poorly concealed attempts to attain capacity payments, Europe’s utilities have misused the trust of the European Commission and Europe’s CCS community. It’s shameless how Eurelectric proudly announces the formation of a new CCS taskforce and ‘calls on policymakers to push ahead’, while simultaneously pulling out of Europe’s largest and widest coalition working on CCS.”

What happened next

Is there any CCS? 

Why this matters.

We keep assuming we can deploy these technologies at massive scale, rapidly, despite all evidence to the contrary. It’s one of the ways we avoid looking at how much some of us are emitting.  There is trouble ahead.