Some comments from Statoil – one of the Conference Silver Sponsors
Overview:
- GHGT is the world’s largest conference on greenhouse gas related technology and is held bi-annually. With 1250 delegates from 153 countries at Kyoto this year, the conference continues to provide world-leading guidance on the science and technology for greenhouse gas emissions reduction.
- The conference theme was “CCS: Ready to Move Forward” and at the opening the IEAGHG Executive Committee Chairman, Kelly Thambimuthu, argued that “The time is right for CCS and that CCS is the key to the climate challenge.”
- Overall the conference mood was positive, despite set-backs related to the global financial crisis. It is clear that CCS is essential for the world’s future energy mix, and as a new technology concept it is moving slowly but steadily forward.
Some statements from selected Keynote Plenary Speakers:
- Brad Page, CEO Global CCS Institute, stated that actual CCS projects (operational and planned) will only reach half the IEA 2020 target of 100 large-scale projects by 2020. Currently 8 large-scale CCS Project are in operation and another 8 are under construction. He also highlighted how CCUS (mainly with CO2EOR) has become the key factor in the USA and Canada, and showed that the cost of CO2 avoided using CCS is cheaper than most renewable energy options.
- Jay Braitch, Senior Advisor, USDOE, argued that the USA is a leader in CCS technology, with in 8 full scale CCS demo projects in operation. The US Kemper project is world’s most advanced IGCC Coal CCS Project and the Summit Project in Texas is close behind with 2.4Mtpa CO2EOR and 0.5MTpt Urea production.
- Mr. A. Nishida, Chairman of Toshiba, profiled the importance of energy efficiency measures. For example, Toshiba’s eco products already reduce emissions by 3.5Mtpa, and more generally low energy light bulbs could, for example, give 650Mt CO2 emissions reductions.
Some other general observations from the conference as a whole, included:
- On storage capacity, Jim Dooley argued that no matter how you add up the widely ranging capacity estimates there is plenty of storage capacity for the 21st Century.
- CO2EOR, as part of Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage (CCUS), is growing fast in the USA and Canada, while Europe is still struggling to get full-scale CCS demonstration projects off the drawing board.
- The Steel industry has big potential for energy savings and CO2 reductions, and is ready to move into CCS, but awaiting support to move forward.
- There were plenty of new insights presented at the conference, but learnings from real demo projects were still somewhat thin on the ground.
Blogged by Philip Ringrose,
on behalf of the Statoil GHGT-11 participants
