Stefanie Held: I think it’s important to keep an open mind and to look at the technology and what it can do. It’s important to store CO2 safely.
That’s Stefanie Held of the International Energy Agency. This organization advises the European Union, US, and other countries on how to keep our energy supplies stable and affordable. Held spoke with EarthSky about carbon capture and storage, or CCS – a technology being developed to first capture the CO2 emitted from the production of electricity, and then store that CO2 safely underground.
Stefanie Held: CCS is a key technology moving forward, which is existing, available, and can be used today, if we want to achieve by 2050 the targets that we’ve set ourselves.
Held said that her organization’s goal is to cut CO2 emissions that come from energy production in half by 2050.
Stefanie Held: If you want to do that at lowest cost, then CCS is the key technology.
Today, just a handful of carbon capture and storage projects exist. But that’s changing, said Held.
Stefanie Held: As we move forward into 2050, we’re looking at more than 3,000 projects on the ground, and most of them will be in developing countries.
That’s because, according to the International Energy Agency, China, India, the Middle East, and other developing countries will account for 97% of the increase of greenhouse gas emissions from energy production for the next two decades. Held added that CCS should compliment energy efficiency and renewables. She spoke more about the ‘roadmap’ developed by the International Energy Agency for achieving climate reduction goals.
Stefanie Held : What we find really important to say is that CCS is a key technology moving forward, which is existing, available, and can be used today, if we want to achieve by 2050 the targets that we’ve set ourselves. And the IEA is promoting a 50 percent CO2 energy base reduction by 2050. If you want to do that at lowest cost, then CCS is the key technology. But it’s part of a portfolio of technologies. It’s not the only option.
Held talked more about the role of developing countries in sites for carbon capture and storage projects
Stefanie Held: The IEA, with the roadmap, has set out the need that is there for the world to achieve the 50 percent reduction target. It’s clear that right now, OECD countries need to lead the way on projects that need to be scaled up later and that can become fully commercialized integrated systems. But, as we move forward into 2050, we’re looking at more than 3,000 projects on the ground, and most of them will be in developing countries. Capacity building, technology transfer, learning and doing things together in international collaborative ways is key.
As of 2010, only a handful of CCS projects exist, a marked contrast from the 3,000 the IEA says are needed to meet climate goals.
Stefanie Held: We have about, we say 17, but we heard from the panel as well that there are a few projects that are being set up. But what we would like to see is that they become really quickly, fully, commercialized so that we can learn, and that it’s not only linked to clean coal, or coal-fired plants, but to other industrial sectors like cement and steel, aluminum, etc.
EarthSky asked Held what is the biggest technical obstacle to CCS.
Stefanie Held: There really isn’t an obstacle at all. The technology is available, and it can be used. There are milestones for us to achieve, regulatory milestones. We need political will as well as some integrated regulation and the CDM funding mechanism, for example. But the technical obstacles have been solved. And now, all we need to do is scale it up and take it from there.
Please recall the wonderful quotation by Joseph Campbell,
“When we talk about settling the world’s problems, we’re barking up the wrong tree. The world is perfect. It’s a mess. It has always been a mess. We are not going to change it. Our job is to straighten out our own lives.”
Let us imagine (in full agreement with Joseph Campbell) that “our job is to straighten out our own lives” and that it is precisely the unsustainable ways we are living out our lives in this wondrous planetary home we inhabit which is inducing the formidable global challenges now looming so ominously before all of us on the horizon. Consider that human beings are the primary cause of certain converging ecological threats the children could confront in the future.
In all the discussions I can recall about “the human predicament” never have I heard the idea presented that human beings cannot resolve problems which we are responsible for creating. We are not asked to change a world which is perfect, but to make changes in unsustainable patterns of behavior that are within our control. The mastery that gave rise to the global challenges to human wellbeing and environmental health is the same mastery that can be deployed in responding ably to those challenges. If conspicuous per-capita overconsumption and extravagant hoarding of limited resources; rampant overproduction of virtual mountains of unnecessary stuff; and unbridled overpopulation activities by the human species, when taken together, are “producing” threats to humanity, Earth and its environs, then sensibly changing these ways of behaving will mitigate and eventually resolve our plight. Is there any reason to doubt that human beings can alleviate any plight human beings can produce? Our task is to adequately deploy gifts God has given humankind to acknowledge, accept, address and overcome the human-induced challenges before us.
By choosing necessary changes in our behavioral repertoire (in the sense of willing the inevitable), the family of humanity will find its way through the human-driven mess we have made in this world (not of this world) which is the perfect creation of God, I suppose.
The fact is that CO2 is not a potent or plentiful in the atmosphere (0.038%)so wouldn’t it be logical to capture a potent greenhouse gas and plentiful gas like water vapor. Yes, I proppose the sequestering of water to prevent the formation of a potent gas that being water vapor!
a p garcia,
Ice core studies make it difficult for me to pooh-pooh CO2 as a significant greenhouse gas, as graphs show an apparent connection between atmospheric CO2 levels and temperature. In modern geological history, atmospheric CO2 has bounced from roughly 180 to 300 parts per million (ppm) for the last several hundred thousand years. In our day, we have reached uncharted territory, with atmospheric CO2 close to 390 ppm and going upward.
Bruce
Foolishness, Very expensive foolishness. Fisrt, there is no AGW. The entire scam is outed and is falling apart. And there is a very large obstacle to this “technology”. It will double electric bill ans produce absolutely nothing. This will cause further damage to an economy reeling from over taxation and government overspending. Add further cost with no benefit whatsoever might make Marx smile in his grave but will not help our climate and WILL further damage our economies. This will hurt humans in this country.
Dear Stefanie, Deborah, A.P., Bruce, Benjamin and the Earth & Sky community,
Please assist me. Our species has given itself the name Homo sapiens sapiens.
In light of the deplorable, human-induced state of our planetary home as well as all of the unfinished work we have immediately ahead of us in order to begin accomplishing the many things that some of our brightest and best say “matter most” for the future of life, are we justified by reason or common sense in naming ourselves as we have or is this way of identifying ourselves a misleading moniker of a sort that reveals more about human hubris than it says about human intelligence, much less our possessed wisdom?
Would the name “Homo hubris hubris” be more accurate?
As ever,
Steve
I find it extremely interesting whereas all scientific findings are scrutinized to the point of minimal objection and little is left to argue against the finding.
With all data to prove AGW, there is little tolerance for any scrutiny or debate over this potentially expensive resolve. Why is there no serious discussion and open debate in a public forum? Is the data not strong? Are the proponents and detractors incapable of stating their cases for all to hear?
It means a great deal that all of you are willing to speak out openly regarding whatsoever is true to you. Whether we agree about many or few things is unimportant. At least to me, you exemplify the intellectual honesty and moral courage that are rarely found in public discourse, which is dominated by politically convenient, economically expedient and culturally syntonic verbiage emitted ubiquitously by mainstream media.
How can we possibly address and overcome the global challenges before us if so-called leaders and self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe among us refuse to acknowledge them? How are willful blindness, hysterical deafness and elective mutism by this “politically correct” and “socially agreeable” leadership, with regard to certain human-driven global threats to humanity, helpful?
Can you think of issues more essential to the future of our children than the ones we are discussing now? Among the ideas presented in this thread, are there more vital issues than the ones derived directly from the patently unsustainable global overconsumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities of the human species that are rampantly overwhelming the finite resources and frangible ecology of Earth in our time?