The UK is to provide up to £60 million in funding to support the development of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology in emerging markets.
Climate Change minister Greg Barker announced at the third Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM3) in London that the funding would “support the development of new partnerships and capacity building activities in emerging markets”. The £60 million is being taken from funds already announced for international climate finance and is the UK’s contribution to the Carbon Capture, Use and Storage (CCUS) Action Group.
The announcement was welcomed by CCS industry groups and came after a report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned that clean energy technologies were no being deployed quickly enough.
The report – Tracking Clean Energy Progress – highlights the rapid progress being made in some clean energy sectors but concludes that most clean energy technologies are not on track to make their required contribution to reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
The report was presented at CEM3 in April.
“The ministers meeting this week in London have an incredible opportunity before them,” said IEA Deputy Executive Director Ambassador Richard H Jones. “It is my hope that they heed our warning of insufficient progress, and act to seize the security, economic and environmental benefits that a clean-energy transition can bring.”
The report notes that many technologies with great potential for energy and emissions savings are making halting progress at best. CCS is not seeing the necessary rates of investment to develop full-scale demonstration projects, and nearly half of new coal-fired power plants are still being built with inefficient technology, says the IEA. Vehicle fuel-efficiency improvement is slow, and significant untapped energy-efficiency potential remains in the building and industry sectors.
Jeff Chapman, CEO of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association said that CCS needs to be deployed on a global scale in both the power and industrial sectors. “I am very pleased to see the UK is joining other developed nations in making a significant contribution to support the deployment of CCS in the developing world,” said Chapman.
Joan MacNaughton, Global Adviser on Sustainable Policies for Alstom said: “We welcome this UK leadership in funding CCS capacity building in developing countries. If developing countries don’t soon embrace CCS, the world will continue on a path to destructive and probably unmanageable climate change impacts.”
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