Media Releases

Media Releases

Global CCS Institute Statement on the European Climate Law

4th March 2020

The Global CCS Institute welcomes Europe’s first-ever Climate Law proposal published today by the European Commission to enshrine the EU climate neutrality objective by 2050 at the latest in EU legislation.  The Institute applauds Europe’s climate ambition and the vision put forward by the European Green Deal.

The EU 2050 climate-neutrality objective can only be achieved by reducing and avoiding emissions at existing sources as well as enhancing emission removal. Therefore, a wide portfolio of climate mitigation solutions and technologies, including carbon capture and storage (CCS), will be needed to deliver on this ambition.

CCS technologies and projects will have an important role to play to deliver large-scale carbon removal and address emissions in the most challenging sectors and at large-scale industrial sources. This set of technologies will be essential to deliver the clean energy transition for key industrial sectors and delivering net-zero and in the future negative emissions. It will also be a crucial technology to ensure a just transition for communities and industry.

Speaking about the announcement, Guloren Turan, General-Manager for Advocacy at the Global CCS Institute said:

“The EU’s proposed climate law is an important step forward in EU’s climate policy. CCS has an important role as an emissions reduction and carbon removal technology. The technology can help drive Europe towards its climate neutrality target. With the proposed target, incentivising emission removal becomes increasingly important. Therefore, there is a need to establish strong policies and measures at the European level to advance both natural and technological carbon removal.”

There are currently two large-scale CCS projects operating in Europe and an additional four in various stages of development. The next wave of European CCS projects touches a number of key industries of strategic importance for Europe’s economy and aim to use shared CO2 transport and storage infrastructure. The development of this infrastructure will be key to decarbonise a multitude of industrial sectors as well as bring the technology costs down.

The Commission’s proposed law defines the trajectory for greenhouse emission gas reductions at the European level with a review every five years.  The Climate Law will be presented to Environment Ministers tomorrow.

More about European Climate Law

Read the Institute’s recent paper on the European Green Deal

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