China’s coal usage without CCS may hinder climate targets – IEA

Interview article by Jonathan Lopez

LONDON (ICIS)–As long as China and other countries in Asia continue devouring coal for energy and chemicals production without applying carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies the ambitious targets set in the Paris’ climate change agreement may be difficult to achieve, according to an executive at the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Fabian Kesicki, petrochemical analyst at the IEA, said the Paris-based agency is likely to review later this year its projections for the development of CCS technologies around the world as “we are clearly seeing there are some delays” in implementing them.

Kesicki had already said in November 2015 that, without applying CCS technologies but using coal at current levels, China’s CO2 emissions reduction commitments would be challenging to achieve.

CCS technologies are at early stages of development, and they are still relatively expensive, but its deployment could help countries with large reserves of coal like China use the commodity without emitting to the atmosphere great amounts of greenhouse gases (GHG), which would be stored underground.

The IEA said soon after the UN’s Conference of the Parties 21 (COP21) in Paris in December 2015 that China’s new normal would lead to less coal usage, making more achievable the COP21’s commitment of limiting the global temperature increase by 2100, compared to pre-industrial levels, to 2 degrees Celsius.

Although it’s early days, signs are not encouraging. China continues to use vast amounts of coal and is overlooking the development of CCS to make that usage cleaner.

“Indeed, we are seeing some delays in its implementation and it’s likely in our forthcoming World Energy Outlook 2016 to be published in November this year we might need to delay some of the projections for CCS, simply because we not seeing a large ramp up of CCS technologies,” said IEA’s Kesicki.

“We have some applications in the chemical sector which are very favourable for CCS, like methanol or ammonia production in which almost pure CO2 can be absorbed and of which production in China is mostly coal-based. But on the ground, actions are not being taken as fast as we would need to limit temperature’s increase to 2 degrees Celsius.”

The petrochemical analyst went on to say that if the COP21 agreement is fully backed by all the signatory nations, part of the decrease would come from technologies like CCS, which uses a heavily-polluting commodity to turn it into a cleaner source of energy.

“If we really want [to limit the temperature rise to] 2 degrees, the industrial sectors don’t have many choices, but for the petrochemical industry the opportunities [to develop without significant CO2 emissions] are even less numerous, so CCS technologies would help a lot,” he said.

The signs, however, might not be too encouraging, at least in Europe. The UK government slashed in 2015 a £1.0bn competition for the development of CCS technologies while Polish chemical firm Grupa Azoty’s plans to build a “CCS-ready” coal gasification plant has been put on hold after the company’s management was purged by the new government in February. 

While other innovative and clean sources of energy have boomed in the past two decades – mostly wind and solar photovoltaic – their final use has been mostly directed to electricity consumption.

Production of chemicals, excluding the anecdotal trials and small-scale production by some large companies, continues to largely depend on crude oil and coal, two of the most polluting commodities. Moreover, their availably is abundant – and cheap.

Nevertheless, Kesicki said the target of 2 degrees by the end of this century can still be achieved, although the effort will need more joint action like the one seen in Paris last year, when policy makers from nearly 200 countries agreed on binding targets for climate policy.

“We see possibilities it could happen [to limit the temperature rise to 2 degrees] and the COP21 agreement was a very encouraging sign. Before the Conference, at the IEA we said if all pledges from the COP21 were followed the temperature rise by 2100 would be around 2.7 degrees [but] we see that rather as a start, not an end point,” he said.

Optimistic, Kesicki mentions the large and globally spread development of solar photovoltaic energy, which at the same time has brought prices for the technology down.

During the past decade in Europe, the technology has been heavily subsidised and roofs covered in solar panels have become a common picture in cities and villages across the region.

Equally, he says the commitment of policy makers is crucial so the private sector can invest its ways into new technologies, which could not be developed without proper infrastructure, for example.

As populations across the globe feel climate change is real, and starting to affect their lives, policy makers seem to take it more seriously and according to Kesicki they are enshrining that preoccupation on their national legal systems.

“The percentage of energy consumption covered by mandatory energy efficiency regulation rose from 1974 to 2005 from close to 0% to 14%. However, in the last 10 years that figure has jumped to 27% – it has doubled,” said Kesicki.

“And a lot of this is happening in emerging countries. Certainly it has been driven by high energy costs, but if we continue bringing policy makers together and raising the attention on the subject I think it would be possible [to limit temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius by 2100].”

Pictured: Fabian Kesicki. Source: IEA