Expert Workshop on Financing Carbon Capture and Storage: Barriers and Solutions

Publication Overview

The main purpose of the conference was to provide a clearer picture of the options available to finance CCS projects and to increase the involvement of experts from the financial sector and to discuss financial instruments with industry and Government representatives. The ultimate outcome of this work will be to identify, encourage and develop world-wide collaboration and practical development of financial mechanisms to accelerate the progression of CCS projects from R&D to commercial reality.

Publication Summary

The conference discussion provided the following points of note:

• Even with a price for carbon credits generated through CCS other financial incentives are needed to make CCS projects viable.
• CCS is not supported by a policy framework except in Norway and Holland.
• There is a perception that climate change and energy security supply issues will be drivers in the development and commercialization of CCS.
• More research is needed into the whole CCS value chain and to identify viable responses to deal with liability issues as well as undertaking projects using different technologies.
• If the required rapid large scale commercial deployment of CCS is going to happen, then the installation of significant GW capacity of CCS is needed as building demonstration plants alone is unlikely to bring costs down quickly enough.
• The financial sector is interested in CCS but needs to have more information on CCS and also the mechanisms available for financing the projects and what rate of return each generates.
• Liability is seen as an enormous issue which insurance companies do have several models for however there is no actual template available and there needs more work to be done on quantifying the actual liability in dollar terms to allow insurance companies a better means of assessing what underwriting is needed.