Excerpt from the editor’s accompanying email: In a "Roadmap" report, published in 2009, the International Energy Agency (IEA) sets out the case for carbon capture and storage (CCS) in no uncertain terms. CCS, the IEA argues, must play a major role in reducing worldwide carbon emissions. The nations of the world, says the IEA, must be prepared to spend an 'additional' $ 2500 to 3000 billion up to 2050 to create a global infrastructure to capture CO2 and store it underground.
The Apollo program pales in comparison to this "Project CCS": the IEA's target is for 3,400 CCS-projects to be operative by 2050, which together would capture 10 billion tons of CO2 or one-third of current global emissions. That means that from today on one CCS-project would have to be realised every 4 days for the next 38 years - and we have hardly even started yet. Ambitious as this may sound, the IEA nevertheless argues that its global CCS programme is a low-cost option: without CCS, overall costs to reduce emissions to 2005 levels by 2050 would increase by 70%, the prestigious OECD think tank insists. (…) As a journalistic medium, European Energy Review takes no position on this dilemma, but we do view it as our task to bring you informed articles for and against "Project CCS". Today, we have an article by Peter Droege, Professor of Sustainable Spatial Development at the University of Liechtenstein and urban planning consultant Matthew Ulterino, who strongly argue that spectacular advances and cost reductions in renewable energy make CCS a costly exercise in futility.