China and India Ineligible for Carbon Capture Funding?

December 30th, 2011 by Susan Kraemer

It looks like China, India, Ghana, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and South Africa may be eliminated as eligible countries for Clean Mechanism Development (CDM) funding for Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CSS) projects, in negotiations at the Durban climate talks.

Unfortunately, these are among the very countries that need it most. These countries are now considered too developed to qualify as Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and CDM funds are going to only be allowed for projects in the most undeveloped countries.

The EU, which is currently the largest funder of CDM projects that offset emissions at home, has said that beginning in 2013, they will only allow CDM-funded projects in LDCs. (Egypt and Morocco have been recipients of generous CDM funding from Europe, which has jump-started huge solar and wind projects that will ultimately make Morocco 42% solar powered, for example.)

Until the Cancun climate negotiations, only clean energy or efficiency was included in CDM projects. CCS was not even considered an eligible form of climate mitigation, and so thus was reliant on unreliable government funding that comes and goes.

But under the Kyoto Protocol, which was just extended till 2017 (or 2020) at Durban, CCS projects are included for the first time. (In 8 years, every nation will be bound in the same legal arrangement, so this rule will essentially just continue and expand after 2020, creating funding for CCS.)

The reasoning behind allowing CCS to qualify is that any new coal would then be cleaner (from a climate point of view) than what is on the grid now. Of course mining coal is still a filthy and dangerous endeavor for its many immediate health risks, but it is the combustion of coal that presents the real climate danger over the coming centuries, which is what the climate legislation deals with.

But after years of failed negotiations resulting in international inaction, the danger to the climate from a smothering blanket of CO2 has become more pressing as time goes on. Beggars can’t be choosers. Along with more sensible forms of clean energy, mitigating the climate impact of the inevitable burning of coal is now also essential.

The Saudis fought for including CCS as CDM-eligible, and finally got it at Cancun.Then this year, at Durban, the policy was refined to cover the risks associated with CCS; with an agreement to define rules on how to cover long term liability, the permanence of sequestration, and the risk of leakage.

But now, with CCS finally included, like any other CDM, it will only be allowed in true LDCs.

The irony? It has taken so long to include CCS under the Kyoto Protocol, that China and India, that would have been among the former least developed countries; now no longer qualify.

Draft procedures

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Tags: CCS, CDM, Durban, Kyoto Protocol, LDCs

About the Author

Susan Kraemer writes at CleanTechnica, CSP-Today, PV-Insider , SmartGridUpdate, and GreenProphet. She has also been published at Ecoseed, NRDC OnEarth, MatterNetwork, Celsius, EnergyNow, and Scientific American. As a former serial entrepreneur in product design, Susan brings an innovator's perspective on inventing a carbon-constrained civilization: If necessity is the mother of invention, solving climate change is the mother of all necessities! As a lover of history and sci-fi, she enjoys chronicling the strange future we are creating in these interesting times. Follow Susan on Twitter @dotcommodity.

Anonymous

These conflicts of interest are such a drag on progress, can we afford to wait for international agreement on dealing with AGW?

If we can make renewables so commercially attractive that they totally displace fossil fuels for electricity generation, CCS may be an expensive irrelevance.

There is one sure-fire way of doing that – invest in well-understood energy storage technologies first. That would make all renewables more attractive and electricity cheaper too, once the daunting capital outlay has been recouped.

Susan, I’m dying to read your views on my comment on your off-shore wind article of Dec. 10. If you think it’s really positive, Zachary has more.
- http://muckrack.com/dotcommodity Susan Kraemer
  
  Amazingly, we do have international agreement now. Durban provided it. It will be law in 8 years, about the same run up time as from California’s AB32, signed in 2006, implemented in 2013, that led to GW of solar investment in that 7 year period.