Australian govt-backed fund offers $A50m for carbon capture, storage

The Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute has announced a $A50 million annual fund to support large-scale projects around the world.

Applications are open until January 8, 2010.

The institute, funded by the Australian Federal Government, has members including over 30 countries and 130 companies. New Zealand was a founding member.

Its role is to help accelerate CCS projects globally, said chief executive Nick Otter.

“Our financial resources are focused towards those projects that promise the greatest return towards delivering our objective of accelerating the construction and operation of CCS projects.”

While the institute said there was growing action to achieve the G8 objective of deploying at least 20 commercial scale CCS projects by 2020, there was an urgent need to advance larger and more diverse projects.

A CCSI study on New Zealand shows its unique position with agriculture contributing heavily to its emissions profile, along with its high proportion of electricity sourced from renewable sources.

As a result, the need to apply CCS technologies in the short-term in New Zealand seemed less well proven, the report said.

Fast-tracking commercial-scale technology to capture emissions and store them underground is attractive to heavy-polluting countries including the US and Australia where fossil fuels contribute heavily to power generation.

Such techniques would reduce carbon emissions but allow cheap generation from fossil fuels to continue.

But CCSI communications Chandran Vigneswaran said in order to manage emissions, things like CCS needed to be considered as part of a portfolio approach, rather than a silver bullet.

“It does have a role in the future of New Zealand – as one of the founding partners.”

A Global CCS Institute study shows there are 55 fully integrated, commercial-scale projects around the world, each at a different stage of planning but all facing similar barriers to their development.

The $A50 million fund will support concept and pre-feasibility studies, or contribute to specific aspects of feasibility and front end engineering and design (FEED) studies.

But the Global CCS Institute was focused on removing barriers to specific projects, rather than allocating funding as other governments were around the world.

It will also help with regulatory frameworks to enable quicker deployment and link potential project partners and investors.

Public-private partnerships were one option, including in New Zealand, Mr Vigneswaran said.

The program aims to capture relevant knowledge from projects it supports to allow the broader industry to learn from project experiences, and increase their prospects for success.