Electric power plants are responsible for approximately one third of global CO2 emissions. Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) has the potential to play a major role in reducing them, albeit at a considerable cost – if applied today to an existing power plant, the cost of electricity generation would nearly double. Nevertheless, given that the world relies on fossil fuels for over 85% of its energy use, CCS presents a possible way to reduce CO2 emissions until other cleaner technologies can be developed.
Because of its growing importance in climate policy deliberations, the risks and governance issues of CCS are receiving increased attention (including a previous IRGC project focused on the regulation of CCS). Studies to date have focused mainly on issues related to geological storage, the dominant method proposed for disposing of captured CO2. In contrast, the purpose of IRGC’s current project is to highlight and discuss risk governance issues related to the first stage of the CCS process, namely the capture of CO2. Although capture systems can be applied to a variety of industrial processes, the focus of this project is on fossil fueled power plants.
In addition to addressing the technical aspects of power plant CO2 capture, the project focuses on associated secondary risks (to health, safety and environment; economy and finance; law and regulations) and how they are addressed by current governance systems.
The aim of the project is to identify risk governance deficits and provide policy recommendations on how best to balance the risks and opportunities of this promising and increasingly debated method of limiting CO2 emissions.
This project started in the summer of 2009 with the drafting of a concept note, which is now available to download from our website. The work has been funded from IRGC general funds and IRGC wishes to thank Alpiq Ltd for having suggested this as a suitable topic for IRGC’s attention.The current budget for this project is 15,000 CHF.
For more information about this project, please contact Ms Malin Samuelsson at the IRGC secretariat malin.samuelsson@irgc.org