The text of the Modalities and Procedures that will enable CCS to be incorporated in the CDM were approved by Parties yesterday in Durban. The final decision text will be forwarded to the final plenary session later this week for adoption by the Parties although this is expected to be a formality.
This is an important official recognition by the UNFCCC of the role of CCS in global climate change and sets an important precedent for the inclusion of CCS into other financing and technology support mechanisms. The Modalities and Procedures also establish the rules for managing CCS projects in developing countries that are supported by UN climate finance.
It has taken a number of years of lobbying to achieve this result culminating in over thirty hours of negotiation in Durban.
The text contains a number of sound features and requirements, which make for a sound CCS project: detailed geologic site characterization, ongoing monitoring and history matching, a thorough risk assessment, operating and design parameters to prevent leakage, mitigation and remediation, site closure criteria and financial responsibility instruments.
ZERO is fundamentally critical about the way the Clean Development Mechanism currently works, as investments in climate mitigation measures are accounted instead of and not in addition to strictly necessary emission reductions in developed high emission countries. International mechanisms that facilitate GHG reductions in poor countries are definitely needed and desirable, but such mechanisms must ensure that the reductions happen additionally to national emission cuts “at home”. Therefore, a reformation of CDM is required, as well as new international measures.
ZERO nevertheless supports the inclusion of CCS as a technology in the CDM. It is positive that CCS now has been included as a necessary technology for mitigating climate change, which hopefully will open up for new and more comprehensive measures for the deployment of CCS internationally. Also the IPCC (2007) has stressed that CCS is one of several measures to be undertaken if we shall manage to avoid ”dangerous climate change”. Therefore, ZERO considers CCS as a technology that should be implemented quickly at a large scale. The deployment of CCS must take place in addition to - and together with - massive deployment of renewable energy and energy efficiency.
