Media Releases

Media Releases

New report highlights strategic policy priorities for accelerating carbon capture and storage deployment

2nd April 2019

The Global CCS Institute, an international think tank and a leading authority on carbon capture and storage (CCS), is launching today a report exploring how to stimulate investment in CCS. The new report identifies concrete policy actions to ensure CCS delivers on global climate targets.

The Institute’s report reviews the progress achieved until now, and identifies the policies and commercial conditions that enabled investment in the 18 large-scale CCS facilities currently in operation, and the additional five that are under construction. The report also identifies overarching barriers to CCS deployment including market and information failures, which recent projects had to overcome.

Based on an assessment of existing CCS projects, the Global CCS Institute found that several of these facilities have common features, most built with grant support and relying on revenue from enhanced oil recovery. Others, in particular those in the United States, relied on tax credits, or the regulation of carbon emissions, in the case of the Gorgon project in Australia.  The paper also highlights that the cost of CCS is closely linked to the number of CCS facilities in operation and that it will continue to fall as new projects come online due to economies of scale and learning by doing.

Despite some progress in the deployment of CCS, the current policy environment will not suffice to stimulate the scale-up of the technology to deliver the number of projects needed to meet the Paris targets.  The paper reveals a policy framework that will enable the scaling up of CCS deployment, one that must focus on de-risking investments, creating new business models around shared transport and storage networks and long-term storage liability management. To achieve this, governments will have an important role to play.

The report also found that debt financing will be an essential asset for future projects. To accelerate project development, banks will have to provide access to affordable debt financing to CCS project developers. The paper also examines the eventual progression from high cost debt financing to the mitigation of risks that will result in the reduction of the cost of debt for future CCS projects.

Finally, the report puts forward a set of key recommendations that will create an enabling policy environment to accelerate the deployment of CCS:

  • Establish a value on carbon to create a financial incentive for investing in CCS
  • For governments to play the critical role of enabling the development of shared transport and storage infrastructure by investing directly in infrastructure or by setting the regulatory framework within which networks can be developed cost effectively
  • Implement a legal and regulatory framework that clarifies storage operators’ liabilities
  • Provide capital support in the form of grants, accelerated depreciation, concessional loans, or other mechanisms to attract private capital to CCS investments in the early stages of deployment.
  • Identify and consider additional policy interventions designed to reduce specific risks perceived by financiers and equity investors in order to bring down the cost of capital and enhance the financial viability of future CCS investments.

A webinar will be held on April 4th to discuss the report findings. Two authors of the Institute’s report, Dominic Rassool, Senior Consultant Policy and Finance and Alex Townsend, Senior Consultant Economics both from the Global CCS Institute will present the findings. You can register to the webinar here.

 

You can download the full report here.

 

Antonios Papaspiropoulos (Melbourne) : +61 401 944 478 antonios.papaspiropoulos@globalccsinstitute.com

Annya Schneider (Brussels): +32 255 03972 annya.schneider@globalccsinstitute.com

Lucy Temple-Smith (Melbourne): +61 466 982 068 lucy.temple-smith@globalccsinstitute.com

Lee Beck (Washington DC): +1 202 677 9053 lee.beck@globalccsinstitute.com

About the Global CCS Institute:  The Global CCS Institute is an international think tank whose mission is to accelerate the deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS), a vital technology to tackle climate change and provide energy security. Working with and on behalf of our Members, we drive the adoption of CCS as quickly and cost effectively as possible by sharing expertise, building capacity and providing advice and support so that this this vital technology can play its part in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. For more information, visit www.globalccsinstitute.com

 

 

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