ENERGY : CARBON STORAGE: BRITISH MEPS ON FRONTLINE.

The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), with its adoption at its September plenary session of an opinion by Richard Adams, expressed support for those trying to give a boost to carbon capture and storage (CCS), a technology the EU can use to shrink its environmental footprint by storing CO2 from its power plants and industries in geological formations. The opinion is very timely. On 26 September, the European Parliament's Committee on Energy (ITRE) discussed amendments to a draft opinion by Vicky Ford (ECR, UK) on an own-initiative report by Chris Davies (ALDE, UK) of the ENVI committee. The Davies report comments on the communication adopted by the European Commission in March on the future of CCS in Europe. ENVI members are expected to vote on the report in November before passing it on to the plenary, in mid-January 2014.

These three reports have two things in common: they urge the Commission to take additional measures to promote CCS and they are all written by British nationals. The only project currently seeking EU financial support - under the NER 300 initiative - is British. NER 300 serves to finance CCS and renewable energy demonstration projects by monetising 300 million emission allowances from the New Entrants Reserve (NER) of the Union's Emissions Trading System (ETS). Since being set up by the Commission in 2010, it has been hit by the relentless devaluation of the price of CO2. From 16.52 in 2010, a tonne of CO2 today costs 4.5 to 5, obliging the Commission to abandon several projects already accepted, starting with carbon capture and storage projects.

CCS CERTIFICATES

To keep the financing of CCS demonstration projects from depending entirely on a mechanism built on the ETS, the three rapporteurs ask the EU and the member states to set up other funding instruments. For the short term, while...