“The game is over” for carbon capture and storage, priced out of the low-carbon energy mix by the rise of cheap renewables, industry experts say. Even the use of CCS to decarbonise heavy industries like steelmaking now looks less attractive. The endgame has started for CCS. Once seen as unavoidable to mitigate global warming, the technology has suffered setback after setback in Europe. And the rise of cheap renewables might be the last nail in its coffin. Carbon capture and storage initially appeared a sensible option to decarbonise coal-fired power plants, said Auke Lont, the CEO of Norwegian power grid operator Statnett. But the emergence of renewables at a cost “below seven euro cent per kilowatt hour” means “there is no room for carbon capture and storage in the power sector,” he said. As prices of renewable electricity continue to fall “there is not much room left for CCS other maybe than the very-hard-to-abate sectors” of the economy, Lont added, saying it might still be an option for cement production. Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation (ECF), agreed. CCS, she argued, is a technology that was purely envisaged to abate emissions in sectors where no better solution could be found. “It’s not innovation, or a business model or whatever. It’s just a cost, a net cost. And across the world, there is no strong carbon price. So it’s a cost with no benefit. That’s why there is no business model.”
Euractiv 4th Dec 2017 read more »
