UK-backed report identifies ‘viable business models’ for carbon capture technology

(EurActiv, 19 Jul 2018) Carbon capture utilisation and storage (CCUS) offers “one of the greatest industrial opportunities” for Britain as the world pivots to a low-carbon economy, said Claire Perry, the UK’s Energy and Clean Growth Minister.

“There is international recognition that we need CCUS to meet the global climate ambitions agreed through the Paris Agreement in 2015,” Perry wrote in a foreword to the report by the CCUS Cost Challenge Taskforce, that will be submitted to the UK government on Thursday (19 July).

“Whilst we have made great strides in decarbonising our power sector, we know that the UK still needs gas,” Perry said, adding the technology “may have a role to play” in this regard by cutting the carbon impact of gas while “extending the life of our existing plant”.

“We want to have the option to deploy CCUS at scale during the 2030s, subject to costs coming down sufficiently,” Perry said, adding she believes “the opportunities from CCUS are real”.

CCUS is the latest offshoot of carbon capture and storage (CCS), a technology that involves burying emissions from fossil fuels in underground rock formations, usually depleted oil and gas fields. CCS was initially promoted at the beginning of the century as a way to decarbonise the power sector but it was undermined by the rise of cheap renewable energies – mainly wind and solar – which don’t emit CO2 in the first place.

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EurActiv, 19 Jul 2018: UK-backed report identifies ‘viable business models’ for carbon capture technology