
CCS is recognised as indispensable in the Industrial Carbon Management Strategy.
Director for CCS Europe Chris Davies was interviewed by Energy Intelligence this week. Here is what he had to say about CCS in Europe.
The ICMS describes carbon capture solutions as indispensable, but has left the heavy-lifting for the next iteration of the Commission. However, the timing of the ICMS is bad. Policies should have been in place two years ago during the middle of the Commission’s term.
The key thing is that there has to be a business case to take CCS forward. The gap is very wide at the moment, and we need to have government commitment towards CCS. You can't do a CCS project unless your own government is behind you facilitating it. And principally, it's going to facilitate it by providing financial support to create the business case, and above all, to derisk the project. CBAM could help some sectors make the business case for CCS much better. The cement sector says if we're protected from outside competition, we can pass the costs of CCS on to our customers. So as long as we're not undercut by foreign competition, then there's a potential business case there.
Yet, the scale of the CCS challenge in the EU is huge. The ICMS is calling for 280 million tonnes per year of CO2 storage capacity in 2040. We need more than 500 of these projects built over the next 16 years. That is one every 12 days on average.
Even though Brussels has become a CCS supporter, many member states remain unconvinced. Denmark and the Netherlands are the leaders, with Sweden close behind. The other supportive countries are Germany, France, Belgium, Italy and Greece. That still leaves about 15 or 16 member states, which have effectively done nothing with CCS. With the upcoming European elections, it is important to see cross-party support for CCS.
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