Climate Change: The Road to Copenhagen Continues- EU & China

Two other major players in the climate change world are the European Union and China. China has been using EU benchmarks to gauge their own projections and commitments, a nod toward the EU’s self-proclaimed leadership in the global battle against climate change. The EU is now offering assistance to China and India deal with carbon emissions.

Remember when you were a little kid and you were eating in the kitchen and instead of cleaning up your crumbs on the floor you just swept them under the rug? Well, there is a high-tech process called Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) that sounds kind of similar. You take the emissions from coal-fired power plants and bury them. Like, underground.

According to documents released at this week’s meeting in Brussels, the EU plans to help both China and India develop CCS technology. The assistance will come in the form of consultation around finance and technology. The EU is making early moves in what they see as a crucial area for the Copenhagen climate change summit in December.

"China builds, every year, as much coal-fired power plant as the entire UK generating capacity. Unless a way can be found of making this climate-compatible, we can never meet our climate objectives, regardless of what action we take in Europe,” reported Reuters from an industry consultation document.

Current estimates say that CCS adds about $1 Billion to the cost of each coal-fired power plant. Wow. $1 Billion per power plant is a staggering estimate- but it may serve to strengthen the CCS business models looking to get in on the profits.

Eric Drosin, spokesman for the European CCS-backing ZEP coalition of industry, scientists and environmentalists said:

"A project of this size has never been done before. Knowledge sharing is crucial to the rapid deployment of CCS in China. We are willing to share all information except that which is covered by intellectual property rights."

Other environmental groups, like Greenpeace, aren’t so keen on CCS:

"Rather than trying to persuade China to bet on a technology that might not even work...the EU should help China invest in renewables and efficiency and leapfrog the fossil fuel-based energy model of the West," said Frauke Thies of Greenpeace.

Whatever the method, the EU and China are embarking on the EU-China Near Zero Emissions Coal (NZEC) proposal with an initial investment of 60 Million euros from EU development funding. The report estimates that the CCS component of the Chinese NZEC demo project will cost about 300 Million euros.Report authors added in that wonderfully optimistic-destiny sounding vague political language:

"We will seek to garner financial support from member states for this initiative, which in the first instance will affect China, then India, South Africa, OPEC and other emerging economies and developing countries.”

The fact that the EU and China are making progress on this is encouraging, and the jury is still out on CCS, though the idea of burying gas strikes me as at least partially… full of hot air. Regardless, projections for power sector emissions in the report claim that 60% of CO2 emissions will be captured by 2050- apparently the EU is floating its hopes on capturing gas.