CCUS Roundtable to input to G20 - Strengthening International Collaboration on Carbon Capture Use and Storage

 Japan has the Presidency of the G20 this year, hosting the G20 meeting on 28-29 June in Osaka. They are interested in potentially including an agreement at G20 on CCUS. RITE organised a workshop jointly with C2ES to generate ideas and identify best practices focussed in three CCUS areas: policies; finance; and international collaboration and knowledge sharing, with the objective being to produce recommendations which could be input to the G20 process. Some fifty CCUS experts were invited to a Roundtable meeting 13th-14th February in Washington DC. Compliments to RITE and C2ES for an interesting and well organised meeting. It was run under Chatham House rules so I am limited in what I can report.

IEAGHG were invited to participate and chair the penultimate session on International Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing. This looked at experiences and best practices from collaborations from the research scale, pilot scale and full scale, also with a perspective from a developing country with many opportunities for CCUS. Chairing this session and discussion was of course a pleasure, as these topics are core to IEAGHG's activities such as the GHGT conferences, our meetings of networks of experts, our workshops and reports. We have seen many international collaborations initiated as a result of our activities, including the second large-scale CCS project, the IEAGHG Weyburn-Midale CO₂ Storage and Monitoring Project.

This Roundtable made me reflect on the work to generate the G8 agreements on CCS in 2005 when the UK had the G8 Presidency and I was working in UK government on these recommendations to G8. The final G8 agreements on CCS in the 'Gleneagles Plan of Action on Climate Change, Clean Energy and Sustainable Development' were as follows:

"We will work to accelerate the development and commercialization of Carbon Capture and Storage technology by:

(a) endorsing the objectives and activities of the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum (CSLF), and encouraging the Forum to work with broader civil society and to address the barriers to the public acceptability of CCS technology;

(b) inviting the IEA to work with the CSLF to hold a workshop on short-term opportunities for CCS in the fossil fuel sector, including from Enhanced Oil Recovery and CO₂ removal from natural gas production;

(c) inviting the IEA to work with the CSLF to study definitions, costs, and scope for 'capture ready' plant and consider economic incentives;

(d) collaborating with key developing countries to research options for geological CO₂ storage; and

(e) working with industry and with national and international research programmes and partnerships to explore the potential of CCS technologies, including with developing countries." (G8 2005)

It is interesting to reflect on the success of these. Of particular note is the capture-ready initiative, as this was delivered by IEAGHG with the report IEAGHG 2007-04 which became the original definition and reference on capture-ready, for example forming the basis for the UK government requirements for capture-ready fossil power plant and is still well-cited elsewhere. Also to note the recommendation on exploring the potential with developing countries, which continues with many examples including the ongoing World Bank's and ADB's programmes on CCS funded by the UK government and others.

So no pressure then Japan, we hope to see new CCUS agreements that are equally successful and long-lasting!

Thank you again to RITE and C2ES for inviting IEAGHG and organising such a good Roundtable meeting.

For the press release see https://www.c2es.org/press-release/c2es-and-rite-host-roundtable-on-strengthening-international-collaboration-on-carbon-capture/ .