David Reiner

The evolution of a climate regime: Kyoto to Marrakech and beyond

At meetings in Bonn and Marrakech in 2001, the Conference of the Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change broke through an impasse on the detailed provisions needed to allow the Kyoto Protocol to enter into force. Key ingredients in the breakthrough included U.S. withdrawal from the process, an effective relaxation of emissions targets for Japan, Canada, and Russia, and provision of access to unrestricted emissions trading. We analyze the costs of implementation and the environmental effectiveness of the Bonn-Marrakech agreement, and its effect on the relative roles of CO2 vs. non-CO2 greenhouse gases. The ability of the major sellers of permits, notably Russia and Ukraine, to restrict access to permits, and the ability to trade across all greenhouse gases controlled under the Protocol, are both found to have a significant effect for both costs and effectiveness. Finally, the implications of the agreement for the future evolution of the climate regime are explored.

How aware is the public of carbon capture and storage

Publisher Summary This chapter reviews a survey that was conducted of public attitudes on energy use and environmental concerns. Goals of the survey included determining attitudes toward global warming and climate change mitigation technologies, the level of public understanding of global warming and the carbon cycle, and public awareness of carbon dioxide capture and storage. The survey results show that the environment is not a top priority for the U.S. public and global warming is not the top environmental concern; there is much confusion concerning the carbon cycle and the causes of global warming; and less than 4% of respondents were familiar with the terms carbon dioxide capture and storage or carbon sequestration. It is hoped that results of this survey will be helpful in designing public outreach campaigns.

Stakeholder Attitudes on Carbon Capture and Storage - an international comparison

Abstract This paper presents results from a survey on stakeholder attitudes towards Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). The survey is the first to make a global comparison across three major regions; USA, Japan, and Europe. The 30-question survey targeted individuals working at stakeholder organizations that seek to shape, and will need to respond to, policy on CCS, including electric utilities, oil & gas companies, CO2-intensive industries and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Stakeholder attitudes on Carbon Capture and Storage-An international comparison

This paper presents results from a Survey of stakeholder attitudes towards Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). The Survey is the first to make a global comparison across three major regions North America, Japan, and Europe It is based on a 30-question survey which targeted individuals working at stakeholder organizations that seek to shape, and will need to respond to, policy on CCS, including electric utilities. oil and gas companies, CO2-intensive industries and non-govern mental organizations (NGOs). The paper reports results from the original survey carried out in 2006 and from a recent follow up on key CCS questions (April 2009). The results show generally small differences across the regions and between the different groups Of stakeholders All believed that the challenge of significant reductions in emissions using only current technologies was severe. There was a widespread belief that CCS as well as renewable technologies such as solar power will achieve major market entry into the electricity sector within the next 10-20 years, whereas there is more scepticism about the role of hydrogen and especially nuclear fusion in the next 50 years. All groups were generally positive towards renewable energy Yet, there were some notable areas of disagreement in the responses, for example, as expected, NGOs considered the threat of climate change to be more serious than the other groups. North American respondents were more likely to downplay the threat compared to those of the other regions The Japanese were more concerned about the burden that would be placed oil industry in the coming decade as a result of emissions constraints and NGOs were more likely to believe that the burden imposed would be light or very light. NGO respondents also believed CCS to be far more attractive than nuclear power (fission) but much less than renewables As expected, the risk for leakage from reservoirs was ranked number one of the risk options given The follow-up study generally confirmed the results of the original study with a few notable differences. As expected, the results of the follow-up shows that respondents consider CCS to play an increased role in the national climate debate In Japan, there was an increased fraction of respondents who claimed that their organization has a clear position on CCS.

Ocean Carbon Sequestration: A Case Study in Public and Institutional Perceptions

Publisher Summary The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization of Japan (NEDO), and Norwegian Research Council (NRC) entered into a Project Agreement for International Collaboration on CO2 Ocean Sequestration in Kyoto on December 4, 1997. By signing the agreement during the Third Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP-3), the groups demonstrated their commitment to mitigating climate change, but also opened themselves to international scrutiny. DOE, NEDO and NRC agreed to an initial field experiment on ocean carbon sequestration via direct injection. These original ‘sponsors” were later joined by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) of Australia, Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) and the Swiss/Swedish firm Asea Brown Bovery (ABB). The sponsors created a Steering Committee (SC) to manage the direction of the project. In addition, a Technical Committee (TC) consisting of the participating research institutions was formed to guide scientific aspects. The purpose of the initial experiment was to secure reliable field data that could be applied to understand how the chemical environment of the deep ocean is perturbed by direct injection. The data would be used to develop models to accurately predict chemical changes for a range of injection scenarios. This would be the first critical step in understanding the environmental impacts of the direct injection of CO2 into the ocean.

Getting Climate Policy on Track after The Hague

In November 2000, the Sixth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP-6) ended in disarray and recrimination. The objective of the meeting was to agree on the details of the definitions and rules underlying the Kyoto Protocol negotiated in 1997. Unfortunately, the issues at stake were not small ones but points of principle and substance on which agreement had previously proved impossible, not only in Kyoto but in the negotiating sessions that followed. COP-6 is to be reconvened in July 2001 in the hope of resolving the differences, but the outlook is not favourable because positions appear to remain far apart. As a result, it is not clear what directions the international negotiations might take next. This article explores various paths, and draws the conclusion that several years may be required before a necessary revision of the Kyoto rules and targets can be undertaken. In the interim, progress on climate issues should not stop, and the authors suggest a set of efforts to be pursued, even while the search for a common global response continues. These efforts include pursuing domestic action to reduce emissions, maintaining activities already begun under the Framework Convention, and, in as much as possible, seeking agreement on consistent accounting rules.

Stakeholder Views on Financing Carbon Capture and Storage Demonstration Projects in China

Chinese stakeholders (131) from 68 key institutions in 27 provinces were consulted in spring 2009 in an online survey of their perceptions of the barriers and opportunities in financing large-scale carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) demonstration projects in China. The online survey was supplemented by 31 follow-up face-to-face interviews. The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) was widely perceived as the most important institution in authorizing the first commercial-scale CCS demonstration project and authorization was viewed as more similar to that for a power project than a chemicals project. There were disagreements, however, on the appropriate size for a demonstration plant, the type of capture, and the type of storage. Most stakeholders believed that the international image of the Chinese Government could benefit from demonstrating commercial CCS and that such a project could also create advantages for Chinese companies investing in CCS technologies. In more detailed interviews with 16 financial officials, we found striking disagreements over the perceived risks of demonstrating CCS. The rate of return seen as appropriate for financing demonstration projects was split between stakeholders from development banks (who supported a rate of 5-8%) and those from commercial banks (12-20%). The divergence on rate alone could result in as much as a 40% difference in the cost of CO(2) abatement and 56% higher levelized cost of electricity based on a hypothetical case study of a typical 600-MW new build ultrasupercritical pulverized coal-fired (USCPC) power plant. To finance the extra operational costs, there were sharp divisions over which institutions should bear the brunt of financing although, overall, more than half of the support was expected to come from foreign and Chinese governments.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS): The way forward

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is broadly recognised as having the potential to play a key role in meeting climate change targets, delivering low carbon heat and power, decarbonising industry and, more recently, its ability to facilitate the net removal of CO2 from the atmosphere. However, despite this broad consensus and its technical maturity, CCS has not yet been deployed on a scale commensurate with the ambitions articulated a decade ago. Thus, in this paper we review the current state-of-the-art of CO2 capture, transport, utilisation and storage from a multi-scale perspective, moving from the global to molecular scales. In light of the COP21 commitments to limit warming to less than 2 °C, we extend the remit of this study to include the key negative emissions technologies (NETs) of bioenergy with CCS (BECCS), and direct air capture (DAC). Cognisant of the non-technical barriers to deploying CCS, we reflect on recent experience from the UKs CCS commercialisation programme and consider the commercial and political barriers to the large-scale deployment of CCS. In all areas, we focus on identifying and clearly articulating the key research challenges that could usefully be addressed in the coming decade.

Public Acceptance of Geological Disposal of Carbon Dioxide and Radioactive Waste: Similarities and Differences

Public acceptance of geological disposal of carbon dioxide (CO2) and that of radioactive waste (RW) are fundamentally different problems because of the history, scale and nature of the two issues. CO2 capture and storage (CCS) is a technology in its infancy with no full-scale commercial application and there are only a handful of full-scale storage projects globally. CO2 storage is almost completely unknown whereas RW disposal has been the subject of highly charged (often unresolved) political debates for decades and all matters nuclear are viewed as both the subject of fear and fascination in the broader cultural and political context. Nevertheless, there are some notable similarities, including: the difficulty of extricating not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) considerations from other concerns; the inability to divorce the politics of waste streams from the underlying electricity generating technologies; the challenge of communicating the highly technical nature of both issues; and the role that both CO2 storage and RW play in the larger debate over energy policy, particularly as a proxy issue for non-governmental organizations. A key question identified is whether CCS will continue to be portrayed as the saviour of fossil fuels or whether it becomes an Achilles’ heel, much as resolving RW has become a necessary condition for further expansion of nuclear power. It is too early to draw any firm conclusions regarding the acceptability of CO2 storage because of the current low levels of awareness. Nevertheless, the nature of the CO2 storage problem tends to support the view that it will be less controversial than RW because of the large number of storage sites needed, public familiarity with CO2 and the need to resolve storage at the very beginning before CCS can proceed on large point source facilities.

The Economics of the Nord Stream Pipeline System

We calculate the total cost of building Nord Stream and compare its levelised unit transportation cost with the existing options to transport Russian gas to western Europe. We find that the unit cost of shipping through Nord Stream is clearly lower than using the Ukrainian route and is only slightly above shipping through the Yamal-Europe pipeline. Using a large-scale gas simulation model we find a positive economic value for Nord Stream under various scenarios of demand for Russian gas in Europe. We disaggregate the value of Nord Stream into project economics (cost advantage), strategic value (impact on Ukraine’s transit fee) and security of supply value (insurance against disruption of the Ukrainian transit corridor). The economic fundamentals account for the bulk of Nord Stream’s positive value in all our scenarios.