It will have escaped no-one’s notice in the utility business that despite huge investments in clean energy and tough emissions reduction targets, Europe is still burning coal without having the technology to deal with the emissions.
Thus far the obligation to deal with the pollutants emitted has been concentrated on those who emit, the power companies. Yet none of them has yet developed a full-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) facility because none of them can work out how to pay for it – and make it pay.
Perhaps we are looking at the wrong target to get CCS funded and working and should be looking further up the energy chain to the fossil fuel supplier.
The idea is simple. If you supply fossil fuels to Europe, then you would need to also deliver a certain proportion of certificates which prove you have permanently stored CO2 equivalent to a certain proportion of the emissions to atmosphere that your fossil fuel will create.
Changing the focus of the obligation to fossil fuel suppliers has three advantages.
First, the fossil fuel companies have the kind of billions needed to fund CCS and they are international. Second, they understand the risky bit because it is they who have drilled for gas and oil and emptied the fields in the first place.
Third, they have more experience in delivering large-scale multi-disciplinary projects.
And there is a fourth reason. If it is their obligation and they find a more efficient and effective means of reducing emissions, then they are welcome to do so. So they may get round to weaning their shareholders, and us, off oil and gas.
Let’s be clear, we would all prefer not to keep inventing new forms of support, particularly, as we know all too well, after immense effort you might not end up with what you needed, and even if you do, it might not work.
However, everyone in the climate change community knows we need an answer to emissions from hydrocarbon combustion at large point sources if we are to stand any chance of averting dangerous climate change.
Ian Temperton, head of advisory, Climate Change Capital