Sorting climate change the easy way

Jem Cooper

As the world strives to find more and more environmentally and economically friendly ways to save our warming planet, we must invest in transitional methods of cutting emissions until clean technology is capable of meeting our needs on their own. Carbon capture and sequestration is one of the more contraversial, but highly effective ways of doing this.

Here guest writer Jem Cooper gives his two cents on how to make carbon capture more appealing...

We need an international arrangement to tackle global warming. But for cap and trade, cap and dividend or carbon tax to work globally there needs to be agreement either about how to share the limited allowable carbon emissions between sovereign nations or about how to share the trillions of revenue from an international tax or auction of allowances. Such an agreement seems unlikely any time soon if ever.

In a recent Times Online live debate 85 percent voted that "Fossil fuel companies should be obliged to sequester an increasing fraction of the carbon content of the products they sell to avoid dangerous climate change".

It is impractical to capture carbon from vehicles but it is not impractical to power them with electricity generated with carbon capture. There will remain a few applications, such as transport etc. in remote areas and aviation, for which mains electricity or carbon capture cannot be used and I do not advocate increasing the cultivated area to provide biofuel. But the downwelling polar currents will continue to move about 6 percent of today's emissions to the deep ocean for well over a thousand years, and this could allow ongoing limited emissions for these difficult applications.

Obliging fuel producers to pay for the capture of an amount of carbon equal to a proportion of what they supply will be popular with:

· Fast growing nations because it does not restrict relative growth

· Fuel producers because in the long run they cannot stay in business without carbon capture

· Fuel producers because carbon capture significantly adds to fuel demand

· Greens because the increased cost of fuel drives energy saving and renewables

· The anti-coal lobby because the plan disproportionately adds to the price of coal

· Generators because if they choose to capture their emissions the cost is spread between all fuel users

· Bio-ethanol producers because they can get paid to sequester the CO2 from fermentation

· The political right because the plan neither raises nor uses government funds

· Workers because it will allow all industries in all countries to compete on a level playing field. There are no carbon tax or emission cost differentials

· Consumers because the impact on fuel prices is gradual; the proportion captured can start at a few percent

· Consumers because it is affordable. Even if the captured proportion were 100 percent a typical capture cost of $75 per tonne of CO2 would only equate to $32 per barrel of crude which is modest compared to recent price swing

· Taxpayers and governments because there is no need for them to fund carbon capture

· Everyone because it is certain to deliver if the contracts are honoured

· Everyone because there is no need for interminable negotiation and delay. There is only one number to debate, the global annual emission target, and that is defined by the 2oC limit already agreed at Copenhagen.

Some have objected that this proposal favours carbon capture over other low carbon generation technology. This is true while the scheme is getting going but in time, as carbon emissions approach about 6 percent of today's value (the sustainable level) power generators will pay nearly as much in the added cost of their fuel as they receive in payment for sequestering carbon.

Carbon capture is an essential economic solution

The International Energy Agency (an intergovernmental body) have said that achieving climate stabilisation in 2050 will cost at least 70 percent more without carbon capture and that the power sector will need to be largely decarbonised by then. Carbon capture is therefore an essential part of the most economic solution and for every year we delay reducing emissions we squander about fifteen years of our children's meagre ration.

Recent reports from the World Future Energy Summit say that "speakers pointed to the maturation of CCS and many successful pilot facilities around the world. And they set the expectation that the industry is now ready to see production facilities built in large numbers."

If fuel producers are obliged to place contracts for carbon capture, I think there will be power companies and others from all round the globe competing to take their money. I hope the world will be left wondering what all the fuss around cutting emissions was about.

Jem Cooper is a chemical engineer living in the UK. He was Global Process Engineering Manager for BP Chemicals when he took early retirement in 1999. He is the inventor on 15 patents mostly owned by BP but 4 filed since 1999.

Jem's web site: http://jemsavestheplanet.blogspot.com/