Carbon capture and storage key to mitigate climate change
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Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a key mitigation technology that should be recognized in appropriate international legal frameworks including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), says the communique of an international ministerial meeting held in London on Tuesday.
The third ministerial meeting of the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum (CSLF), which involves ministers from countries such as UK, Norway, USA, Australia, Brazil and China, has focused on the commercial prospect of CCS technologies.
Wan Gang, the Minister of Science and Technology of China, said that besides capturing carbon dioxide, we should also emphasize on the utilization and commercialization of the captured carbon, such as to neutralize salina lands. That would help the development of CCS technologies that are still in the state of research and development.
Some energy companies, as well as the International Energy Agency and other international organizations, also send representatives to the meeting to provide opinions from the industry and as stakeholders.
UK Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband, who hosted the meeting, said: "Carbon capture and storage is really a key technology", and "this forum will be helpful to have an agreement in Copenhagen."
The UNFCCC conference in Copenhagen this December would be a vital event for tackling climate change, since it aims at a new agreement that would assign legal carbon caps to individual countries after the Kyoto Protocol's expiration in 2012.
Steven Chu, the U.S. Secretary of Energy and also a Nobel Prize winner scientist, said "we can, and should, and must strive" to find safe, affordable, broadly deployable scientific methods for CCS "within the next 8 to 10 years."
He also said the developed countries have the responsibility to help developing countries, in accordance with the communique which states "we recognize there is a need for assistance from developed countries to help developing countries achieve the level of CCS required to fight climate change."
CSLF said it has facilitated 20 diverse CCS projects, which are now expanded to 30 projects, to bring together developed and developing nations in a collaborative quest to curtail manmade emissions of carbon dioxide.
