CCS Europe’s director, Chris Davies, spoke on-the-record to ENDS Europe on the formation of the coalition, his ‘unfinished business’ with carbon capture, and  the EU’s new Net Zero Industry Act, which proposes to make CCS a strategic industry.

Davies is a former MEP and long-time advocate for CCS, having been the rapporteur for the Directive on the Geological Storage of Carbon Dioxide in 2008-2009. He is now heading up CCS Europe, whose mission is to secure the rapid deployment of carbon capture technologies to curb CO2 emissions from industry and other hard-to-abate sources.

“One of the key reasons why CCS has not developed until now, the absolute key reason, is because there’s been no business case for it,” Davies told ENDS Europe.  “Back when we put through the geological storage of CO2 directive, it was assumed that the carbon price through the emissions trading system would drive it forward.”

He went on to say, “A mixture of regulation and financial incentives will take CCS forward. The Commission’s got various instruments like the Innovation Fund and the like – but the majority of financial incentives will come at the national level in the same way as they have for renewable energy.”