Economy & Jobs
Energy & Environment
By Paul Messad | EURACTIV France | translated by Daniel Eck
22-07-2022 (updated: 22-07-2022 )
Nordic countries could be the frontrunners in developing shared transport and stocking facilities - one of the main issues Europe currently faces according to Hemsley. [Dmitry Tsvetkov / Shutterstock]
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Europe is “behind” North America in developing carbon removal disclosure technologies, but French-German scepticism seems to be waning according to stakeholders at an event on Wednesday (20 July) in Paris, attended by EURACTIV.
Read the original French story here.
At the event organised by the Zenon Research and Carbon Gap, attendants and panellists discussed the potential of carbon capture and storage to reach the various carbon neutrality targets, including the ones set by the EU.
“Even if we can think that Europe is ahead on climate issues, on the CDR, we are a little bit behind, especially compared to the USA”, said Benjamin Tincq, Carbon Gap’s launch manager and panellist at the event.
Reforestation, filtering CO2 in the air, increasing soil capacity, rock mineralisation and storing long-lasting products like wood are all possible carbon capture and storage techniques, as cited in a note shared at the event in Paris.
A total of 68 countries agreed to contribute to climate protection and biodiversity conservation by protecting agricultural soils at last week’s World Conference of agriculture ministers in Berlin. EURACTIV Germany reports.
Carbon neutrality must be reached in the EU by 2050, according to bloc targets and in terms of carbon capture and storage, the Commission has set the target of 310 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year ( MteqCO2/year) for land-based storage by 2030.
To this end, the Commission is expected at the end of 2022 to table a regulatory framework to ensure CO2 emissions that are captured, transported, used and stocked by industry are also certified by 2028.
The EU Parliament has also called on the Commission to draft a “negative emissions” report on the carbon market to finance pilot capture projects worth about €1 billion.
“There are a lot of things in the pipeline,” said Tincq.
“Much of the future potential depends on changing diets,” Mike Hemsley, chief strategy and outlook analyst at the Energy Transitions Commission think tank told EURACTIV, noting that switching from a meat-based diet to a vegetarian one would help double the overall bioenergy potential in Europe.
As the French EU Council presidency ended on Thursday (30 June), EURACTIV France takes a look back at how the French dealt with the agriculture file during their six-month stint at the helm of the rotating EU Presidency.
According to Hemsley, Nordic countries could be the frontrunners in developing shared transport and stocking facilities – one of Europe’s main issues.
Leading the pack, Finland, is aiming to reach CO2 negativity by 2040, while Sweden is developing technologies to extract energy from biomass, the emitted CO2 of which it captures and stores.
Due to its oil industry, Norway could become even the main storage well for the EU. Actually, only two active projects are in operation in the EU, “both located in Norway and both capturing CO2 from natural gas processing and reinjecting it into dedicated storage site”, said Hemsley.
Iceland, too, is investing in projects that aim to store carbon in mineral form to transform it into solid carbonate.
Like the Nordic countries, the UK also enjoys a short lead on these issues. On top of having relatively large budgets at its disposal, the country is also looking into the possibility of tracing the sustainability of carbon credits and simplifying the territorial networking of carbon capture and storage projects.
France, however, is mainly banking on its offshore and forestry storage potential. It has set ambitious targets for offsetting its 80 MteqCO2/year of unavoidable emissions by 2050.
The French low-carbon strategy, revised in March 2020, aims to offset 35 MteqCO2/year directly through forests and 20 MteqCO2/year by the products of these forests. The wood used in construction preserves the stored CO2 over its lifetime while leaving room for new plantations.
But forests are at “very high risk”, particularly from fires, Clea Kolster, Chief Scientist at Lowcarbon Capital, told participants at the event.
According to the French strategy, other land uses and new technologies would offset the remaining 25 MtCO2/year.
Eleven thousand hectares of forest have burned down, and 16,000 people have been evacuated due to two fires in Gironde, in La-Teste-De-Buch and Landiras, the South-West of France, that have been raging since Tuesday.
“The situation remains very unfavourable,” said the …
However, the French remain sceptical about developing new technologies, Joseph Hajjar, Head of Office at the Directorate General for Energy and Climate (DGEC) said.
“When we included the objective of carbon neutrality in the law, many parliamentarians asked that this objective be defined without technological capture,” he said.
This illustrates a certain fear of “falling into techno-solutionism, of perpetuating the use of fossil fuels”, he observed.
Germany, long opposed to carbon storage on its territory, appears to have softened its stance since the new government was formed at the end of last year. Research and development programmes are still in the study phase.
Though this mistrust clearly shows “a very clear difference in perception between North America and Europe” on the issue of carbon removal, it is “fortunately changing”, Tincq also said.
Compared to the US, which already committed €6 billion in cumulative budgets to the issue, Europe continues to lag, Kolster added, even if a part of those budgets is used to optimise oil production, note Hajjar.
Though some carbon capture and storage techniques “would be cheaper than emitting CO2 at current [carbon market] prices per tonne”, investors remain cautious because of the “risk of future fluctuations in tonne prices”, Hemsley added.
Still, Western states are expected to capture and store 10 billion tonnes of CO2 annually by 2050, according to estimates from the International Energy Agency (IEA).
But while the past five years have been “very promising”, efforts for 2050 must reach 250 times the current capacity, IEA analyst Mathilde Fajardy also told the event.
The European Parliament has adopted a common position on the European Emissions Trading Scheme (EU-ETS) reform and the bloc’s forthcoming carbon border tax (CBAM) following a compromise between the biggest parties.
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