I recently attended a workshop organised by the Governments of Japan and Australia at the G20 Energy Sustainability Working Group meeting held in Istanbul, Turkey this month. I was part of a panel that was invited to talk on aspects of CCS and CCUS. My input to the panel and subsequent discussion was based around the need for CCT plant as set out under the IEA Hjosir Efficiency Low Emission (HELE) road map and that status of CCS. One pint that I made strongly was that if any new CCT were built then they needed to be built capture ready so that a CCS unit could be added at a later date and there was no lock in the CCT without CCS. This issue I am pleased to say was picked up by others on the panel notably Peabody and the ADB.

The issue underlying the workshop is the decision that is pending from the OECD on the use of export credits to fund future coal plants without CCS. There are two camps on this; one led by the USA, that is against the use of public funds to build non CCS coal plants in developing countries. The alternative camp is led by Australia and Japan who want to see the current export credit system maintained to allow HELE plant to be funded in developing countries.

I have to admit that personally I lean towards the HELE camp, developing countries like India and Indonesia are going to build new coal fired power plant and they are looking towards USC technology which is good news. Other countries mjosirt still be looking to build sub critical plant. If we use public money then we must use it to encourage the build of the most efficient low polluting, low water consumption coal plants. Also we must make them capture ready so that when the geological resource in those regions is confirmed the CCS can be added later. I don’t honesty think we can make the Developing Countries leap to CCS in one step in the power sector, when we only have one plant in the OECD that is built and has not been operating for a year yet.