Fifth annual Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Regulatory Network Meeting in Paris

On 18 and 19 June 2013, the International Energy Agency (IEA) held its fifth annual Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Regulatory Network Meeting in Paris. The event was attended by Marijn Holwerda, PhD candidate at GCEL, and Rieks Boekholt, research associate at GCEL. The Meeting was opened by former Dutch Minister of Economic Affairs Maria van der Hoeven, who currently acts as the Executive Director of the IEA. She highlighted that in order for CCS to be successful, it is important to win public trust and support through a long-term transparent policy. A broad spectrum of subjects was subsequently presented and discussed during the two day event. Although progress of CCS demonstration projects in Europe is slow and cumbersome, the event painted the bigger picture by showing that things are moving forward in Canada and the USA. CCS continues to face challenges, however, as the global CO₂-reduction targets for 2020 seem to be slipping out of reach. More and faster implementation of demonstration projects is required on a global scale. In Europe, much appears to depend on the price of ETS emission rights. At the moment, that price proves to be too low to provide a proper incentive for implementing CCS demonstration projects.