CCUS at CEM14, MI-8 and G20 Energy meetings in Goa

This year the Clean Energy Ministerial's Ministerial meeting was hosted by India in Goa from 19-22nd July. This was held in conjunction with Mission Innovation's MI-8 meeting and adjacent to the G20 Energy Ministers meeting. The CEM/MI part consisted of a large number of side events and a plenary with Ministers, a large "clean energy festival" to quote Juho Lipponen.

Of most significant note in my view was a CEM-CCUS Initiative organised side-event on the Carbon Management Challenge which had been announced by President Biden in April (see my blog Biden announces new Carbon Management Challenge on CCUS and CDR for COP28). Juho Lipponen organised and chaired this event. Brad Crabtree, Assistant Secretary of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management at the US DOE welcomed and described the intentions of the Carbon Management Challenge which are to increase the ambition of countries in deploying CCS and CDR technologies to achieve a 1.2Gt goal by 2030. Representatives of Canada, the UK, Norway, Japan and Saudi Arabia governments expressed their support. It was an honour to be invited to speak to one of three topics on the implementation of the challenge, which was on storage appraisal. I talked about the challenges in that topic including the time to identify and prove-up storage sites, accessing geological data, using examples of Norway and Denmark, the need for assistance to developing countries, and the tools to assist such as the IEA's report on CO2 Storage Resources and Their Development (2022) and the IEAGHG's report 2016-TR02 National CO2 Storage Assessment Guidance. The other two topics were scale-up of deployment which was covered by Dan Dorner of IEA, and national strategies which was covered by Jarad Daniels of GCCSI. The event was well attended with good support from many organisations, including the World Bank. This is promising for its formal launch at COP28 and other countries are being asked to express their support also. I was fortunate to be seated next to a youth representative who asked for education and training in CCS, which was a great segway for me to mention our now 15 International CCS Summer Schools and also the University of Edinburgh's open online CCS course, as well as expressing our support for the Carbon Management Challenge.

There was also a US-organised MI side-event on MRV for CDR, where I was asked to present an update on CDR in UNFCCC and Article 6 and future work needed (including a report underway by IEAGHG on MRV for CDR). There were also presentations from Adam Baylin-Stern of Carbon Engineering, Casie Davidson of PNNL on their MRV work for mineralisation, and Christof van Agt Ross of IEF.

There was a CEM-CCUS and UNIDO event on CCS for the Cement Industry. This included an overview presentation by Thomas Guillot CEO of the GCCA on their decarbonisation roadmap for the global industry, with now some 50 projects at various stages of assessment and development. They are planning future work on CCS for cement in India with GCCSI and CEM-CCUS, to report at CEM-15 in Brazil next year. Brad Crabtree of the US DOE spoke about the cement projects being considered in the USA in Indiana and Arkansas. Henrietta Nesheim of Norway provided an update on the Brevik project which is 60% complete. There was also a third CEM-CCUS event on financing CCUS which I could not attend.

The CEM/MI plenary contained good speeches by ministers and similar VIPs. From India, VK Sawaswat gave a great summary of the need for energy mitigation technologies and said that "India is walking on a tightrope trying to balance energy security for its population and contributing to global efforts to reduce GHG emissions". Their low carbon transition includes eight strategies, one on CCUS, as well as renewables, hydrogen and other areas. US Secretary Granholm had some great quotes including "The world is on fire, we should be on fire too!" and "Deploy, deploy, deploy!".

Fatih Birol of the IEA highlighted the positives in growth in renewable electricity and electric vehicles, but the challenges with the inequity of energy investments particularly in Africa, and the biggest challenge in his view of "fair and effective international collaboration" (which would have been another nice segway to IEAGHG's activities).

Recordings of the events will be available from the CEM website Resources | Clean Energy Ministerial including specifically for the Finance event and Carbon Management Challenge event at CEM-14/MI-8 Side Event Ballroom 1 - YouTube (starting at 1 minute and 4 hours 6 minutes respectively).

G20 Energy Transitions Ministers' Meeting

The G20 Energy Transitions Ministers' communique, called here as an "Outcome Document", was agreed and released after their meeting on 22nd July. This included CCUS listed with some other low carbon technologies as a "mature" technology whose deployment must be accelerated, and BECCS and DAC whose development needs to be accelerated. The full document can be seen here Microsoft Word - Chair Summary & Outcome Document_22 jjULY 636 HRS (g20.org).

In the G20 CCUS workshop in Bengaluru in February we ensured that the high-level discussion panel, moderated by Juho Lipponen, produced five good suggestions for G20 recommendations on CCUS (see my blog G20 International Seminar on CCUS, Bengaluru - BLOG (ieaghg.org) ). Whilst these recommendations are not explicitly in the G20 Outcome Document (which represents what was agreed by all G20 countries), elements of them are in there such as international technology collaboration and technology transfer, and there are more references to these and to abatement and removal technologies in the Chair's Summary part (which did not have to be agreed by all countries). So we certainly gave the G20 Presidency much material and many ideas on CCUS from that workshop, as well as their input from the Indian report from NITI Aayog, titled 'CCUS Policy Framework and Deployment Mechanism in India'.

It was appreciated for IEAGHG to be able to contribute to this busy "clean energy festival" in Goa. All this was achieved during the monsoon weather, compliments to the Indian hosts for making this all work in such conditions.