More information on hydrogen and fuel cells can be found in CAN-Europe’s Technology Sheets

Introduction

Incremental changes to current patterns of energy production and consumption are likely to help us reach initial Kyoto Protocol targets, but will certainly not achieve the major reductions needed in the future. Preventing damaging global warming in the long term, which is the goal of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, will require major changes.

NGOs have always favoured an approach to greenhouse gas emissions reductions that focuses on renewable energy and demand reduction, using combinations of incentives for clean technology, legislative requirements and fiscal instruments. But at the same time, a new set of energy technologies and greenhouse gas emissions reductions strategies are emerging: what is known as the „hydrogen economy" is making its way from university drawing boards into the marketplace.

Many, particularly in the fossil fuel and automobile industries, point to the possibility of a new "green" vision for conventional energy: hydrogen and electricity as clean energy carriers, produced by modern fossil-fuel power plants where the CO2 is captured and sequestered in geological formations. The environmental community has been sceptical of technological panaceas, end-of-pipe solutions and mitigation measures that may address CO2 concentrations but have other unintended consequences. The role of capture and sequestration is therefore the subject of considerable debate. Neveretheless, NGOs point to the possibility of a electric/hydrogen future based on renewable energy. Use of fossil fuels may either provide a stepping stone to that future, or be a barrier to developing those future technologies.

Current industry and government research is increasingly looking into the storage of carbon dioxide in oil fields and in the world's ocean as a means of preventing its release into the atmosphere. These developments as part of the discussion of future energy technologies raise many questions from an environmental point of view. NGOs are monitoring them closely.

Among the key concerns NGOs have about carbon capture are:

- Doubts as to whether CO2 storage can really be made permanent. While oil and gas fields are reasonably well understood over periods of a few decades, the long-term performance of seals and the character of other formations such as saline aquifers is much less well understood. CO2 would need to be trapped permanently - meaning at a minimum for tens of thousands of years.

- Continuing our dependence on fossil fuels. There are many other problems associated with fossil fuels, from the exploitation of developing countries to health problems from air pollution, from oil spills to the propping up of dangerous regimes. Even if carbon capture and storage helps solve the climate problem, it may delay the uptake of renewable energy sources that offer a more sustainable future.

- Health effects. Slow leakage through soils and catastrophic leaks from pipelines can all affect human and ecosystem health. Carbon dioxide in high concentrations asphyxiates.

Conversely, if done as part of a transition to a hydrogen economy, there are potential benefits. These include reduced air pollution from vehicles and more modern fossil power plants (IGCCs for instance), and thus improvements to human health. If carbon capture and storage is combined with biomass fuel, it may also offer the only opportunity to return to pre-industrial levels of atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

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Current Research Activities

This section will focus initially on research going into the different areas of carbon sequestration, as this is a prime concern for CAN-Europe.

Research activities in this field are sponsored by both companies and governments, and carried out by university departments, independent scientific institutions or industry research bodies. (more information on some of the actors and projects mentioned here can be obtained from our links section).

The main business actors in existing projects are, of course, primarily companies involved in fossil fuel extraction and combustion: oil and gas companies, coal producers, some car manufacturers, etc. Among them: BP, Exxon, Shell, EdF, Ford, Statoil, Texaco, Total Fina Elf, RWE, Ford, General Motors and others.

The countries involved in existing research efforts are those that follow a more technology oriented approach in their national climate policy, mainly of the group of the group originally known as JUSCANNZ in the international negotiations. Starting with those most involved: the US, Canada, Japan, Norway, the Netherlands, Australia, plus EU funding in a variety of areas and other EU Member States that are already involved to some extent in ongoing projects.

Researching institutions are mainly industry-sponsored institutes, national laboratories, energy agencies, geological surveys and university departments. Here are some examples:

Government related agencies: National Environmental Technology Laboratory (NETL) – USA (DOE sponsored), CANMET Energy Technology Centre (CETC) / Natural Resources Canada, Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth (RITE) – Japan, NOVEM - Netherlands agency for energy and the environment, British Geological Survey.

University institutes and corporate research: University of Austin/Texas, Bureau of Economic Geology, MIT Laboratory for Energy and the Environment (LFEE), Princeton Environment Institute (PEI), Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA), EPRI - Electric Power Research Institute – USA, Petroleum Technology Research Centre (PTRC)- Canada, Australian Petroleum Cooperative Research Centre (APCRC), Institut Français du Petrol (IFP) and more.

These different kinds of actors are connected by single projects, participation research program budget lines or larger national and international initiatives on geological sequestration.

The biggest one in this field are the activities under the IEA GHG R&D program. Despite the very general title, its activities are quite specifically focused on geological and ocean sequestration. All its present practical R&D projects are in this area (according to their website). The IEA program is supported and sponsored by a lot of governments. Corporate Sponsors are: Alstom Power Technology, BP, Chevron Texaco, EniTecnologie SPA, EPRI, ExxonMobil, Shell International, TotalFinaELf.

The IEA program also co-hosts big conferences which have the same strong bias towards sequestration. The last one of these (GHGT-6)took place in Kyoto of all places, in October 2002.

Another larger international initiative is the Zero Emission Technology Strategy (ZETS) for fossil fuels, a forum supported by the IEA and the OECD. A similar effort, more directly industry sponsored is the CO2 Capture project (CCP). A European initiative (also IEA backed) is CO2NET, which describes itself as “the European technology-networking programme for CO2 sequestration into geological storage following CO2 capture”. (CO2NET brochure). Other projects and initiatives go by the illustrious acronyms of SACS, GRACE, RECOPOL, Geo-Seq, GESTCO, CTI, CSI and so on.

It is hard to tell how big the funding is that is currently spent on sequestration research. The US DOE requested another 10% raise in its 2002 budget for sequestration R&D to over 20 million US$ (annually). This is up from under 9 million US$ in 2000.

Current projects are taking place in a variety of fields. Most ongoing industry efforts are being made where the double dividend of reducing carbon and making a profit can be reaped, like in using CO2 to enhance extraction of gas and oil, or methane recovery from unminable coalbeds. In the US alone, enhanced oil recovery is used on 75 sites. However, at present, not all of these use CO2, and in fact very few use CO2 that is produced as a byproduct of some other industrial activity (and could, therefore, claimed to be an emission reduction).

Other research focuses on necessary background research, like the identification of potential sites for geological storage, technology for separation (different kinds of membranes etc), possibilities of storing liquid CO2 at the sea, environmental impacts and permanence issues.

At the moment this is all at test stage. There are a number of model projects for the various options for geological and ocean sequestration. The Ocean Sequestration Field Experiment (See: CAN-Europe's position on ocean sequestration), originally planned for Hawaii, was moved to Norwegian waters this year, but did not get permission there either. Another well-known project is that of Statoil in the Sleipner Field, where CO2 is pumped into a saline acquifer.

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Ocean Sequestration

The disposal of carbon dioxide in the ocean a.k.a ocean sequestration, is one of the options under discussion in industry and academic circles for as an end-of-pipe technology to avoid greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. The proposal to inject CO2 into the ocean, where it is meant to be taken up by the waters, or kept at the bottom of the sea in liquid form, has received particular attention in 2002, because of the failure of a prestigious field project to receive permission to go ahead from government authorities in Hawaii and Norway.

The "Ocean Sequestration Field Experiment" is one project among a number of research activities in this field. Environmental NGOs have serious doubts regarding the merits of this type of research, and openly fought the field project prior to its failure.

The issues at hand include:

• great uncertainty over emission reduction effects (carbon uptake in the ocean, leakage, permanence)

• indications towards detrimental effects on marine animal and plant life (acidification, local hotspots, uncertainty about deep-sea life)

• violation of internation law regarding the dumping of waste at sea

Member organisations of CAN-Europe share these major concerns regarding this particular technology and call for an end to ongoing research and funding.

Read the CAN Europe Position Paper on Ocean Sequestration

Interesting Documentation

Market Development of Alternative Fuels, Alternative Fuels Contact Group, December 2003.

(Although CAN-Europe was on the advisory panel for this report, the outcome is fully the work of the Commission, and does not necessarily reflect the views of CAN-Europe.)

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