Some 230 gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions can be avoided between now and 2050 – bringing atmospheric CO2 concentrations down 20 parts per million – if carbon capture and storage (CCS) development is pursued aggressively and put into use, according to Shell International’s Unconventional and Enhanced Oil Recovery team.
While the resources devoted to developing renewable energy resources will continue to grow, hydrocarbon fuels will continue be the world’s predominant fuel and power sources during coming decades, according to Shell’s Blueprint and Scramble global energy scenarios for the 21st century.
The pressing need to better manage and reduce overall carbon footprints across societies and countries around the world that rely on hydrocarbons – be it oil, gas or coal – for transportation, power generation and heating and cooling makes CCS an all the more attractive and feasible technology, but only if more is done in short order in the way of multi-stakeholder demonstration and pilot tests, carbon prices increase and CCS projects qualify for carbon emissions reduction credits – such as those issued as part of the EU ETS and UN-Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) – and the necessary legal and regulatory parts are put into place, according to John Barry and his team, who spoke with more than 70 participants from around the world June 19 during the second installment of Shell Dialogues. Convincing the broad public that CCS can be used widely yet safely and responsibly will be one of the biggest and most important hurdles, he added.
Shell’s Enhanced Oil and Uncoventional Energy team took the webcast podium and devoted about an hour to outlining and discussing Shell’s own, as well as broader public-private partnerships, aimed at kick-starting CCS project development. “While it won’t solve society’s energy and environmental problems on its own, it will allow us to continue to make use of the abundant fossil fuels that are needed in the energy mix and provide a bridge to the eventual longer term lower carbon energy future,” Barry, vice president in charge of the Shell team, said.
Here’s a link to the webcast video and transcripts of Shell Dialgoues 2 in its entirety.
