Chinese packaging manufacturer Livan Biodegradable Product Co. Ltd. will build plants in Alsozsolca and Edeleny in eastern Hungary at a combined cost of EUR18 million by 2009, the Hungarian economics ministry says. The plants, which will employ 800 people, are planned to produce initially 50, 000 metric tons a year of environmentally-friendly packaging material, and double that amount by a later date. Livan will use corn to manufacture packaging boxes similar in characteristics to plastic boxes for the food industry.
Policy and regulatory framework crucial for CCS success
In a world that continues to rely on coal as an energy source, carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) has been embraced by many as a promising option for reducing rising CO2 emissions and combating global warming. Yet use of CCS on a large scale raises a mountain of legal and regulatory questions. New research published in the latest issue of Environmental Science & Technology suggests that these issues need as much attention as the technology itself and puts forth several areas where the scientific underpinnings of regulatory and legal decision making can be strengthened.
More importantly, in order to promote carbon-negative energy systems, proactive policy initiatives and even lobbying are needed. Else, CCS will only be looked at in the context of fossil fuels. During a recent EU public consultation on CCS, Biopact suggested EU decision makers look at 'Bioenergy with Carbon Storage' (BECS) as the safest way forward for large-scale initial tests with the technology (quicknote on the issue here).
Currently there is only one organisation working towards the development of concrete policies for the implementation of BECS, namely the 'Abrupt Climate Change Strategy' (ACCS) group, which grew out of the G8 climate change initiative of 2005. ACCS is designing a precautionary strategy based on bioenergy to be prepared for potential abrupt climate change becoming imminent. The associated Bioenergy Future Group is devoted to developing action-oriented steps to implement BECS.
In any case, according to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers, the science, technology and policy communities must urgently enter into a dialogue on CCS.
Yet an abundance of legal and regulatory issues arise from the many phases of a CCS project, which include capturing, transporting, and injecting the CO2 and closing a site. Issues also include responsibility for possible, but not necessarily likely, CO2 leakage if the original injecting company has shut down, ownership of the land and minerals in the land above a reservoir, and ownership of the pores filled by injected CO2. Guidelines for monitoring leakage and accounting for the gas in a regulatory emissions cap-and-trade program need to be hashed out, the authors say. These types of issues are compounded by varying state rules governing underground rights and injection. Before CCS can be used on a broad scale, investors and the public need certainty and assurances that CSS will be done safely and efficiently.
Managing leakage risks
In the new ES&T paper, the authors focus on two areas of research: surface leakage of CO2 and groundwater quality. They present two case studies of analog sites in which an injection well or abandoned well failed in conjunction with a large volume of naturally occurring CO2. Leakage can occur, notes coauthor Elizabeth Wilson of the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, when CO2 migrates to the surface through abandoned well bores or through faults or fractures in the rock. Yet current regulations don't cover human and ecological risks from this leakage:
energy :: sustainability :: climate change :: fossil fuels :: carbon capture and storage :: carbon-negative :: bioenergy with carbon storage :: biomass :: regulation :: policy ::
Ensuring that protocols are in place to deal with such an event is key to CCS's success. "CCS must be integrated into a larger regime, where public perception is very important," Wilson says.
John Venezia of the nonprofit think tank World Resources Institute (WRI) agrees, saying, "What we don't want to do is to start off with a project without having uniform standards. If there is some leakage down the line, it will generate a very bad perception about CCS, and people won't trust it." WRI is working with a diverse group ranging from academics to insurers to devise uniform protocols for the many stages of CCS. Although CCS is a very promising technology, it is just "one of many arrows in the quiver" that can be used against global warming, Venezia adds.
Biopact would stress that - again, if used on carbon dioxide from carbon-neutral biomass - CCS becomes one of the most powerful weapons in the fight against climate change. Not just "one of many arrows". It is for this reason that, a few years ago, some scientists have called for it within the context of the potential threat of 'abrupt' and 'dangerous' climate change, which would require a complete moratorium on the use fossil fuels and a radical switch to carbon-negative systems. On the basis of more recent research, some are meanwhile warning that we may actually already be facing such a dark scenario (earlier post). Thus, BECS systems are more needed than ever. A major effort is needed to get this message across to decision makers.
When it comes to CCS policies as they are looked at in the context of fossil fuels: several government agencies are already working on incorporating science into policy development. Sean Plasynski of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) National Energy Technology Laboratory notes that DOE's 10-year-old program, funded at $100 million for the current fiscal year, has several small CO2 injection pilot projects in place. The DOE has seven regional partnerships in its Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnerships program that involve 350 state agencies, universities, and private companies spanning 41 states and 4 Canadian provinces. The observations from these pilots will support policy and regulatory issues, Plasynski says.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has a smaller yet significant program dealing with the permits needed before a new injection site begins operations, the authors note. EPA staff are developing permits for DOE's CO2 injection pilots using the long-standing underground injection well program developed for hazardous and other wastes; this might be expanded nationally to include CO2 geological sequestration, Wilson says.
References:
Elizabeth J. Wilson, S. Julio Friedmann, and Melisa F. Pollak, "Research for Deployment: Incorporating Risk, Regulation, and Liability for Carbon Capture and Sequestration" [*abstract], Environ. Sci. Technol., ASAP Article, Web Release Date: July 25, 2007, DOI:10.1021/es062272t S0013-936X(06)02272-3
Peter Read and Jonathan Lermit,"Bio-energy with carbon storage (BECS): A sequential decision approach to the threat of abrupt climate change", Energy, Volume 30, Issue 14, November 2005, Pages 2654-2671, DOI:10.1016/j.energy.2004.07.003
Environmental Science & Technology: Linking science with new policies for CCS - July 25, 2007.
Abrupt Climate Change Strategy group.
Potential leakage routes and possible countermeasures for CO2 injected into saline aquifers (click to enlarge). Source: IPCC.
At the Biopact, we track technological and policy developments on CCS because the technique can be applied to bioenergy, in which case radically carbon-negative energy systems emerge that take historic carbon dioxide emissions out of the atmosphere. Such systems are obviously much safer than CCS used on fossil fuels (because if CO2 leakage were to occur on gas originating from carbon-neutral biomass, there would be no net contribution of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere; leaks of CO2 from fossil fuels would be highly problematic). It is interesting to see how the legal and regulatory question marks surrounding CCS - and especially those dealing with the management of leakage risks - would change if the technology were to be applied to biofuels.More importantly, in order to promote carbon-negative energy systems, proactive policy initiatives and even lobbying are needed. Else, CCS will only be looked at in the context of fossil fuels. During a recent EU public consultation on CCS, Biopact suggested EU decision makers look at 'Bioenergy with Carbon Storage' (BECS) as the safest way forward for large-scale initial tests with the technology (quicknote on the issue here).
Currently there is only one organisation working towards the development of concrete policies for the implementation of BECS, namely the 'Abrupt Climate Change Strategy' (ACCS) group, which grew out of the G8 climate change initiative of 2005. ACCS is designing a precautionary strategy based on bioenergy to be prepared for potential abrupt climate change becoming imminent. The associated Bioenergy Future Group is devoted to developing action-oriented steps to implement BECS.
In any case, according to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers, the science, technology and policy communities must urgently enter into a dialogue on CCS.
If there is a real conversation between people on the policy side and people on the science side, then we can begin to develop some guidelines for these relatively new, large-scale CCS projects. Holding off addressing the policy issues until the science is set is going to hold up the process. - Julio Friedmann of Lawrence Livermore National LaboratoryThe concept behind CCS is simple, the authors write: capture CO2 emissions and inject them in a supercritical state into deep geologic formations, where the carbon is likely to stay put for hundreds of thousands of years. Reservoirs for such geologic sequestration are plentiful throughout the world; the best injection spots are deep saline aquifers, depleted oil and gas formations, and coal seams.
Yet an abundance of legal and regulatory issues arise from the many phases of a CCS project, which include capturing, transporting, and injecting the CO2 and closing a site. Issues also include responsibility for possible, but not necessarily likely, CO2 leakage if the original injecting company has shut down, ownership of the land and minerals in the land above a reservoir, and ownership of the pores filled by injected CO2. Guidelines for monitoring leakage and accounting for the gas in a regulatory emissions cap-and-trade program need to be hashed out, the authors say. These types of issues are compounded by varying state rules governing underground rights and injection. Before CCS can be used on a broad scale, investors and the public need certainty and assurances that CSS will be done safely and efficiently.
Managing leakage risks
In the new ES&T paper, the authors focus on two areas of research: surface leakage of CO2 and groundwater quality. They present two case studies of analog sites in which an injection well or abandoned well failed in conjunction with a large volume of naturally occurring CO2. Leakage can occur, notes coauthor Elizabeth Wilson of the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, when CO2 migrates to the surface through abandoned well bores or through faults or fractures in the rock. Yet current regulations don't cover human and ecological risks from this leakage:
energy :: sustainability :: climate change :: fossil fuels :: carbon capture and storage :: carbon-negative :: bioenergy with carbon storage :: biomass :: regulation :: policy :: Ensuring that protocols are in place to deal with such an event is key to CCS's success. "CCS must be integrated into a larger regime, where public perception is very important," Wilson says.
John Venezia of the nonprofit think tank World Resources Institute (WRI) agrees, saying, "What we don't want to do is to start off with a project without having uniform standards. If there is some leakage down the line, it will generate a very bad perception about CCS, and people won't trust it." WRI is working with a diverse group ranging from academics to insurers to devise uniform protocols for the many stages of CCS. Although CCS is a very promising technology, it is just "one of many arrows in the quiver" that can be used against global warming, Venezia adds.
Biopact would stress that - again, if used on carbon dioxide from carbon-neutral biomass - CCS becomes one of the most powerful weapons in the fight against climate change. Not just "one of many arrows". It is for this reason that, a few years ago, some scientists have called for it within the context of the potential threat of 'abrupt' and 'dangerous' climate change, which would require a complete moratorium on the use fossil fuels and a radical switch to carbon-negative systems. On the basis of more recent research, some are meanwhile warning that we may actually already be facing such a dark scenario (earlier post). Thus, BECS systems are more needed than ever. A major effort is needed to get this message across to decision makers.
When it comes to CCS policies as they are looked at in the context of fossil fuels: several government agencies are already working on incorporating science into policy development. Sean Plasynski of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) National Energy Technology Laboratory notes that DOE's 10-year-old program, funded at $100 million for the current fiscal year, has several small CO2 injection pilot projects in place. The DOE has seven regional partnerships in its Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnerships program that involve 350 state agencies, universities, and private companies spanning 41 states and 4 Canadian provinces. The observations from these pilots will support policy and regulatory issues, Plasynski says.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has a smaller yet significant program dealing with the permits needed before a new injection site begins operations, the authors note. EPA staff are developing permits for DOE's CO2 injection pilots using the long-standing underground injection well program developed for hazardous and other wastes; this might be expanded nationally to include CO2 geological sequestration, Wilson says.
References:
Elizabeth J. Wilson, S. Julio Friedmann, and Melisa F. Pollak, "Research for Deployment: Incorporating Risk, Regulation, and Liability for Carbon Capture and Sequestration" [*abstract], Environ. Sci. Technol., ASAP Article, Web Release Date: July 25, 2007, DOI:10.1021/es062272t S0013-936X(06)02272-3
Peter Read and Jonathan Lermit,"Bio-energy with carbon storage (BECS): A sequential decision approach to the threat of abrupt climate change", Energy, Volume 30, Issue 14, November 2005, Pages 2654-2671, DOI:10.1016/j.energy.2004.07.003
Environmental Science & Technology: Linking science with new policies for CCS - July 25, 2007.
Abrupt Climate Change Strategy group.
1 Comments:
Of course sequestering biocoal in abandoned mines, carbon landfills, etc., appears to be essentially risk-free.
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