Bonn post mortem: 'n gemiste geleentheid vir # koolstof vermindering tegnologie

While delegates attending last week’s UN Climate Change Conference in the German city of Bonn ended the event claiming they had made good progress toward hammering out a viable strategy to tackle global warming, observers could be forgiven for concluding that some of the initiatives announced at the summit amounted to little more than hot air. Though nations took some steps towards fleshing out ways to meet the ambitious 2015 Paris Agreement goals, many of the details – and controversial decisions – must still be resolved at future conferences.

Critically, attendees misluk to spend enough time examining key technical issues – notably how to use carbon capture and storage (CCS) and negative emissions technologies to meet global energy needs while mitigating temperature rises. In fact, an attempt by US government adviser David Banks to highlight how the development of CCS or clean coal technologies could reduce poverty while renewables scale up was met with jeers and heckles.

But it’s innovations like CCS that could, in fact, be the key to meeting the Paris Accord objectives. After all, the fact remains that 40% of world power generation comes from steenkool. And despite promises made by coalitions like the PPCA, according to the IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2017, coal consumption is verwag to grow by an additional 125 million tons through 2025. In fact, coal is predicted to remain the world’s single largest source of energy generation through 2040, with India and Southeast Asia rekeningkundige for much of the surge in demand as they ramp up efforts to connect their populations to the grid.

And despite the optimism around renewables, experts still estimate they will only account for 40% of total power generation by 2040, meaning that many countries will continue relying on coal and other fossil fuels – above all, to meet base-load power needs – in the near future. At least 19 countries including India, Japan, and South Africa have low emissions coal technology as part of their INDCs under the Paris Agreement.

CCS comprises a range of technologies that capture carbon from power and industrial plants before storing or converting it to other materials. In Europe, for instance, Norway and the port of Rotterdam are now meeding to build the first chain that will capture carbon from industrial plants and move it to offshore storage sites, a project that could account for one-third of planned CO2 emissions by 2030. Other projects convert carbon for consumer use, with the California firm Blue Planet capturing carbon from fossil fuel power plants and converting it into an ingredient used in concrete.

As global emissions are expected to continue rising, such innovations will play a critical role in minimizing the carbon intensity of electricity generation and heavy industry. Combined with negatiewe uitlaat tegnologie (NET) that aim to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has gesê that CCS will play a vital role in limiting future temperature rises below 2°C. Overall, there are now 17 major CCS installations worldwide, with four more set to begin operations next year. To meet Paris objectives, it is beraamde that roughly 2,000 carbon capture facilities will need to be underway by 2040, with 14% of emissions reductions coming from CCS.

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Ten spyte van die nodig for CCS to combat climate change, however, such solutions were not the focus for attendees at Bonn. While it is all very well for some nations to indulge in some collective virtue signalling, ignoring the fact that even developed countries – including Germany itself – have failed to meet emissions reduction goals in part because of their reliance on out-dated coal plants does little to bring the world any closer to a solution for climate change.

Rather than use events such as the Bonn conference to launch symbolic coalitions – such as the Power Past Coal Alliance (PPCA) - participant countries would have done better to delve into how to use CCS to cut emissions at a time when renewables have not sufficiently scaled up.

Especially as India and other developing nations ramp up their energy consumption, CCS will be a pivotal way for them to bridge the power gap while curbing pollution. This was the point made by Banks during his remarks at Bonn, where he aangekondig that Washington was discussing creating a clean coal alliance with Australia, India, and countries in Africa. US officials said such a coalition would aim to help other nations leverage clean coal technologies and could eventually include other coal-dependent nations like Poland, Bangladesh, and the Philippines.

Despite his case for carbon-reduction technologies, however, the US still failed to deliver a compelling pitch to many policymakers and green campaigners primed to dismiss the potential of CCS outright. This is a shame, as Bonn could have been a platform for serious conversation about how CCS and other technologies can help mitigate the effects of burning energy sources on which the world is expected to continue depending for decades.

At the very least, signs suggest that momentum for CCS may soon take off – if not at Bonn, then at the next Conference of the Parties, slated to take place in the heart of Polish coal country in 2018. For those serious about doing more than making symbolic gestures and actually making progress towards Paris goals, then, the stakes next year will be even higher.

 

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