carbon capture and storage (ccs)

Researchers affiliated with the University of Minnesota, the University of California (UC), Berkeley, and the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have developed a breakthrough computer model that can identify the best molecules for capturing carbon from power plant stacks. The model greatly accelerates...[read more]

Among political insiders in Washington, the conventional wisdom is that action on global climate change is a dead issue for the foreseeable future. But that need not, and should not, be the case, considering that the atmospheric thermostat isn’t on hold while we wait for a better political moment.[read more]

With an allowance surplus building up in the EU ETS and a resulting low carbon price, the urgent need for commercial deployment of CCS has diminished. Furthermore, with natural gas availability growing and renewable energy becoming a sizable factor in the EU electricity mix, it may be well into the 2020s before large scale deployment of CCS is necessary.[read more]

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Carbon capture and storage is not going to save us. We must wean ourselves off fossil fuels as quickly as possible. It has emerged that it is now likely that just one carbon capture and storage project in the UK will receive funding from the European Investment Bank. This is the Don Valley Project, which has already received €180...[read more]

Managing earthquakes caused by human activity is an issue that deserves more attention than it has received to date. It can and should be done with today’s tools, but it hasn’t been done everywhere. A timely new report documents known earthquakes caused by human activities, none of which have been caused by CCS projects.[read more]

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Over the last five years the EU has put great effort into promoting CCS. The Commission has led this, creating a legislative framework for the technology to exist in the field. With such an effort and so much political capital spent, one would expect to see a burgeoning CCS industry, or at least the beginnings of it, appearing across the EU. Unfortunately this is not the case.[read more]

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In a recent New York Times opinion piece, NASA climate scientist James Hansen again puts forward his very compelling argument for strong action on limiting global CO2 emissions. He argues that Canadian oil sands is illustrative of an ongoing global trend to extract or mine increasingly challenging reserves of oil, gas and coal and bring them to market, a behaviour that could mean "game over for the climate".[read more]

Wind energy has become the favourite whipping boy in the renewable energy world. However, solar energy has its critics as well. Wind energy opponents are usually current or prospective neighbours of turbine installations. Solar energy naysayers are typically actual or would-be economists.[read more]

Green Economy: blessing or curse? was the title of a panel debate hosted by the UK newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, late last week. I was fortunate to participate in this, alongside Oliver Letwin MP, Minister of State (providing policy advice to the Prime Minister in the Cabinet Office) and Cabinet attendee. Other panel members were UCL Professor Paul Ekins, Jeremy Nicholson from the Energy Intensive Users Group and renewable energy venture capitalist Ben Goldsmith. Although Mr Letwin chose not to offer any opening remarks, his subsequent comments revealed some interesting thinking in the UK Government on energy and climate change.[read more]

 Editor's note: Marc Gunther is a long-time advisory board member and contributor to TEC. Congratulations to Marc on the publication of his new book! I’m pleased to let you know that my book, Suck It Up: How capturing carbon from the air can help solve the climate crisis, is being published today as an Amazon Kindle Single. Please...[read more]

Today, the National Enhanced Oil Recovery Initiative (NEORI) released its recommendations for advancing CO2-enhanced oil recovery. The Initiative comprises stakeholders from many different walks of life: environmental groups, technology vendors, public and investor-owned utilities, labor, ethanol, fuel producers and project developers....[read more]

David Frum argues that we can only have one of the three wishes for energy. My question is why can’t we strive for energy that is cheap, clean, and secure?[read more]

A recent report from a UN session on climate risk and energy solutions had a leading speaker at the event argue that "Putting a price on climate-warming carbon emissions, which has been instituted in parts of Europe and elsewhere with limited success, would be “nice to have” but not essential. . . .". It may be the case that this reflects a significant level of frustration in the investment community, driven by weak carbon prices, inaction in several major economies and uncertainty with policy implementation where action is underway. Nevertheless, to argue that an issue such as climate change can be addressed without government action is a worrying development.[read more]

In a groundbreaking article to be released this month in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Dr. Paul Epstein, associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, details the economic, health and environmental costs associated with each stage in the life cycle of coal –...[read more]

As the United Kingdom and many other economies contemplate the need for new power generation capacity, a range of options are clearly available. Much has been made in recent years of the potential for offshore wind in the UK and some believe that this should even be the cornerstone of the UK power industry. There are two issues that will really drive the offshore wind industry in the coming years – cost and capacity (or potential). The capacity issue has been widely discussed and there is little doubt about the significant potential of onshore, offshore and deep offshore wind in the UK, but also recognizing the limits due to planning approval and intermittency. The cost issue is less widely discussed and in difficult economic times this is arguably where the focus should be. With the need to meet the UK’s 2020 emissions targets as a given, what is the most cost effective way of achieving this?[read more]