European Commission's compromise: CO2 emissions of 120g/km as a 'virtual' target
After a fierce debate amongst European car manufacturers and individual EU Commissioners over carbon dioxide (CO2) emission reductions from cars (earlier post), the European Commission has finally reached a compromise and proposed a comprehensive new strategy for new cars and vans sold in the European Union. But environmental pressure groups remain disappointed.
Instead of the initial target which was set at 120 grams of CO2 per kilometer (earlier post), the target becomes a 'virtual' one: the commissioners assured the car industry that a 130g/km average would be imposed but that it would not apply to each individual manufacturer but to the industry as a whole, and that further measures, including increased use of biofuel, would mean that cars overall emitted no more than 120g of CO2 per kilometre by 2012.
The European car industry earlier warned that the commission's plans could lead to job losses and factory closures. Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen said the EU's approach must not lead to a shift of production abroad, or to European consumers being forced to buy smaller cars from non-European manufacturers. "The motor industry faces a major challenge... I would urge them to face up to it and not consider it a burden but consider it a positive challenge," he said.
Verheugen added: "We will shortly be in a position to provide not only the safest and best cars, but also the cleanest cars - that is the future of the European automobile industry."
The new strategy, together with a revision of EU fuel quality standards proposed last week (earlier post), further underline the Commission's determination to ensure the EU meets its greenhouse gas emission targets under the Kyoto Protocol and beyond.
The strategy will enable the EU to reach its long-established objective of limiting average CO2 emissions to 120 grams per km by 2012 - a reduction of around 25% from current levels (162g). This corresponds to fuel consumption of 4.5 litres per 100 km (52.2 miles per gallon) for diesel cars and 5 l/100 km (47 miles per gallon) for petrol cars.
By improving fuel efficiency, the revised strategy will deliver substantial fuel savings for drivers. To encourage the car industry to compete on the basis of fuel efficiency instead of size and power, the Commission is also inviting manufacturers to sign an EU code of good practice on car marketing and advertising.
CO2 emissions from cars
Road transport generates about one fifth of the EU's CO2 emissions, with passenger cars responsible for around 12%. Although there have been significant improvements over recent years in vehicle technology - particularly in fuel efficiency, which translates into lower CO2 emissions – these have not been enough to neutralise the effect of increases in traffic and car size. While the EU-25 reduced overall emissions of greenhouse gases by almost 5% between 1990 and 2004, CO2 emissions from road transport rose by 26%:
biomass :: bioenergy :: biofuels :: energy :: sustainability :: climate change :: greenhouse gases :: carbon dioxide :: emissions :: cars :: transport :: European Union ::
Reinforcing the EU strategy
The current EU strategy for reducing CO2 emissions from cars is based on voluntary commitments by the car industry, consumer information (car labelling) and fiscal measures to encourage purchases of more fuel-efficient cars. Under the voluntary commitments, European manufacturers have said they will reduce average emissions from their new cars to 140g CO2/km by 2008, while the Japanese and Korean industries will do so by 2009.
However, the strategy has brought only limited progress towards achieving the target of 120g CO2/km by 2012; from 1995 to 2004 average emissions from new cars sold in the EU-15 fell from 186g CO2/km to 163g CO2/km:
The Commission's review of the strategy has concluded that the voluntary commitments have not succeeded and that the 120g target will not be met on time without further measures.
The main measures it is proposing in the revised strategy are as follows:
* A legislative framework to reduce CO2 emissions from new cars and vans will be proposed by the Commission by the end of this year or at the latest by mid 2008. This will provide the car industry with sufficient lead time and regulatory certainty.
* Average emissions from new cars sold in the EU-27 would be required to reach the 120g CO2/km target by 2012. Improvements in vehicle technology would have to reduce average emissions to no more than 130g/km, while complementary measures would contribute a further emissions cut of up to 10g/km, thus reducing overall emissions to 120g/km. These complementary measures include efficiency improvements for car components with the highest impact on fuel consumption, such as tyres and air conditioning systems, and a gradual reduction in the carbon content of road fuels, notably through greater use of biofuels. Efficiency requirements will be introduced for these car components.
* For vans, the fleet average emission targets would be 175g by 2012 and 160g by 2015, compared with 201g in 2002.
* Support for research efforts aimed at further reducing emissions from new cars to an average of 95g CO2/km by 2020.
* Measures to promote the purchase of fuel-efficient vehicles, notably through improved labelling and by encouraging Member States that levy car taxes to base them on cars' CO2 emissions.
* An EU code of good practice on car marketing and advertising to promote more sustainable consumption patterns. The Commission is inviting car manufacturers to sign up to this by mid-2007.
Disappointment
Jos Dings of the environmental pressure group Transport and Environment (T&E) said the 130g/km limit was a disappointing response to the calls last week by a UN panel of experts for serious action on climate change. He said the retreat from Mr Dimas' preferred 120g/km fuel-efficiency target, was a "reward" to the car industry for making insufficient progress to meet a voluntary target of 140g/km by 2008.
He called for the EU to fix an 80g/km limit for 2020.
The European car industry says consumers have so far shown little interest in cars with smaller engines and lower emissions. It also says there are more cost-efficient ways of reducing transport emissions than introducing costly new technology, such as reducing traffic congestion and changing driver behaviour.
Transport is the only sector in Europe that has shown dramatic increases in CO2 emissions over the last 15 years. The car industry has made huge improvements in engine efficiency, but the power, size and weight have cars have also increased rapidly.
As a result, CO2 emissions have only fallen by 23g/km from the 1995 level of 185g/km. Mr Verheugen said a detailed impact assessment would be now carried out, and that discussions would continue with scientists, research institutes, manufacturers and other interested parties.
The proposed legislation is to be drafted later this year. It will then need to be agreed by member states and the European Parliament.
Article continues
Instead of the initial target which was set at 120 grams of CO2 per kilometer (earlier post), the target becomes a 'virtual' one: the commissioners assured the car industry that a 130g/km average would be imposed but that it would not apply to each individual manufacturer but to the industry as a whole, and that further measures, including increased use of biofuel, would mean that cars overall emitted no more than 120g of CO2 per kilometre by 2012.
The European car industry earlier warned that the commission's plans could lead to job losses and factory closures. Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen said the EU's approach must not lead to a shift of production abroad, or to European consumers being forced to buy smaller cars from non-European manufacturers. "The motor industry faces a major challenge... I would urge them to face up to it and not consider it a burden but consider it a positive challenge," he said.
Verheugen added: "We will shortly be in a position to provide not only the safest and best cars, but also the cleanest cars - that is the future of the European automobile industry."
The new strategy, together with a revision of EU fuel quality standards proposed last week (earlier post), further underline the Commission's determination to ensure the EU meets its greenhouse gas emission targets under the Kyoto Protocol and beyond.
The strategy will enable the EU to reach its long-established objective of limiting average CO2 emissions to 120 grams per km by 2012 - a reduction of around 25% from current levels (162g). This corresponds to fuel consumption of 4.5 litres per 100 km (52.2 miles per gallon) for diesel cars and 5 l/100 km (47 miles per gallon) for petrol cars.
By improving fuel efficiency, the revised strategy will deliver substantial fuel savings for drivers. To encourage the car industry to compete on the basis of fuel efficiency instead of size and power, the Commission is also inviting manufacturers to sign an EU code of good practice on car marketing and advertising.
This strategy is the most ambitious approach ever and the most ambitious approach worldwide towards the development of a low-carbon economy - which is vital for averting climate change. It is the concrete proof of EU leadership in the field. This will require efforts from all sectors, but also open up enormous opportunities for the EU car industries. I call on the EU's car industries to preserve their long term competitiveness by taking the innovative lead, in the interest of consumers and workers alike." - European Commission President José Manuel Barroso.Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas, the staunchest advocate of mandated reductions, commented: "Cleaner, more efficient and affordable cars will help reduce carbon dioxide in the EU, enable us to achieve our Kyoto targets, save energy and encourage innovation. All Member States will need to pull their weight in implementing the measures necessary and have a major responsibility to encourage the purchase of fuel-efficient cars as well as discourage fuel-inefficiency."
CO2 emissions from cars
Road transport generates about one fifth of the EU's CO2 emissions, with passenger cars responsible for around 12%. Although there have been significant improvements over recent years in vehicle technology - particularly in fuel efficiency, which translates into lower CO2 emissions – these have not been enough to neutralise the effect of increases in traffic and car size. While the EU-25 reduced overall emissions of greenhouse gases by almost 5% between 1990 and 2004, CO2 emissions from road transport rose by 26%:
biomass :: bioenergy :: biofuels :: energy :: sustainability :: climate change :: greenhouse gases :: carbon dioxide :: emissions :: cars :: transport :: European Union ::
Reinforcing the EU strategy
The current EU strategy for reducing CO2 emissions from cars is based on voluntary commitments by the car industry, consumer information (car labelling) and fiscal measures to encourage purchases of more fuel-efficient cars. Under the voluntary commitments, European manufacturers have said they will reduce average emissions from their new cars to 140g CO2/km by 2008, while the Japanese and Korean industries will do so by 2009.
However, the strategy has brought only limited progress towards achieving the target of 120g CO2/km by 2012; from 1995 to 2004 average emissions from new cars sold in the EU-15 fell from 186g CO2/km to 163g CO2/km:
The Commission's review of the strategy has concluded that the voluntary commitments have not succeeded and that the 120g target will not be met on time without further measures.
The main measures it is proposing in the revised strategy are as follows:
* A legislative framework to reduce CO2 emissions from new cars and vans will be proposed by the Commission by the end of this year or at the latest by mid 2008. This will provide the car industry with sufficient lead time and regulatory certainty.
* Average emissions from new cars sold in the EU-27 would be required to reach the 120g CO2/km target by 2012. Improvements in vehicle technology would have to reduce average emissions to no more than 130g/km, while complementary measures would contribute a further emissions cut of up to 10g/km, thus reducing overall emissions to 120g/km. These complementary measures include efficiency improvements for car components with the highest impact on fuel consumption, such as tyres and air conditioning systems, and a gradual reduction in the carbon content of road fuels, notably through greater use of biofuels. Efficiency requirements will be introduced for these car components.
* For vans, the fleet average emission targets would be 175g by 2012 and 160g by 2015, compared with 201g in 2002.
* Support for research efforts aimed at further reducing emissions from new cars to an average of 95g CO2/km by 2020.
* Measures to promote the purchase of fuel-efficient vehicles, notably through improved labelling and by encouraging Member States that levy car taxes to base them on cars' CO2 emissions.
* An EU code of good practice on car marketing and advertising to promote more sustainable consumption patterns. The Commission is inviting car manufacturers to sign up to this by mid-2007.
Disappointment
Jos Dings of the environmental pressure group Transport and Environment (T&E) said the 130g/km limit was a disappointing response to the calls last week by a UN panel of experts for serious action on climate change. He said the retreat from Mr Dimas' preferred 120g/km fuel-efficiency target, was a "reward" to the car industry for making insufficient progress to meet a voluntary target of 140g/km by 2008.
He called for the EU to fix an 80g/km limit for 2020.
The European car industry says consumers have so far shown little interest in cars with smaller engines and lower emissions. It also says there are more cost-efficient ways of reducing transport emissions than introducing costly new technology, such as reducing traffic congestion and changing driver behaviour.
Transport is the only sector in Europe that has shown dramatic increases in CO2 emissions over the last 15 years. The car industry has made huge improvements in engine efficiency, but the power, size and weight have cars have also increased rapidly.
As a result, CO2 emissions have only fallen by 23g/km from the 1995 level of 185g/km. Mr Verheugen said a detailed impact assessment would be now carried out, and that discussions would continue with scientists, research institutes, manufacturers and other interested parties.
The proposed legislation is to be drafted later this year. It will then need to be agreed by member states and the European Parliament.
Article continues
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Scientists propose cold storage of CO2
The viability of this geo-engineering option depends on the development of reliable carbon capture and storage (CCS) techniques. The coal industry is investing heavily in CCS and has been looking at storage sites as diverse as salt tables, depleted gas and oil fields, and warm sediments in oceans. But doubts remain over the long-term stability of this type of sequestration; the risk of CO2 leakage remains a major obstacle.
Cold storage
Researchers from the University of Leicester and the British Geological Society (BGS) have now come up with a new proposition: CO2 can be stored as a liquid or a solid in huge, cool underground geological aquifers or reservoirs and stay there harmlessly for many thousands of years. They have already identified sites in Western Europe that would be suitable. Their research is to be published in the journal Planet Earth.
PhD research student Ameena Camps, is working with Professor Mike Lovell at the University's Department of Geology and with Chris Rochelle at BGS, investigating the storage of CO2. Storing the gas in a solid form as a gas hydrate, or as a pool of liquid CO2 below a cap of hydrate cemented sediments, is believed to offer an alternative method of geological sequestration to the current practices of storage in warm, deep sediments in the North Sea.
Recently quoted in Planet Earth Ameena Camps explained: "Hydrates (also known as clathrates) are ice-like crystalline minerals that look like normal ice and form when gas and water freeze together at low temperature and high pressure. They are made of a cage of frozen water molecules with the gas molecules trapped inside."
Although gas hydrates were first discovered two centuries ago, the possible use of carbon dioxide hydrate as a means to help resolve problems of global climate change, and of naturally occurring methane hydrate as a future source of energy, have only recently been suggested:
biomass :: bioenergy :: biofuels :: energy :: sustainability :: climate change :: carbon dioxide :: CO2 :: carbon capture and storage :: CCS :: hydrates ::carbon negative :: Bio-Energy with Carbon Storage ::
Laboratory experiments carried out as part of Ameena Camps' PhD project have indicated that carbon dioxide hydrate should form stable structures in sediments under oceans. By employing geophysical techniques and computer modelling, Ms Camps has identified a number of sites in Western Europe with the potential to store carbon dioxide by this method.
She is also exploring further implications of her research that may benefit geologists' understanding of the stability of deep submarine slopes and contribute to improvements in global water supplies through further understanding of desalination processes.
Professor Mike Lovell, of the University of Leicester Department of Geology commented: "Ms Camps' work is at the forefront of gas hydrate research, and has produced some very exciting results, highlighting the importance of investment in further studies of hydrates.
"Investigations of natural methane hydrates will help our understanding of their role as a natural hazard, while carbon dioxide hydrates are a potential sink for greenhouse gas emissions. This work also has application in other fields such as space research into hydrates on other planetary bodies."
A quick look at the rationale behind the research
Why should CO2 be captured and stored?
Approximately one third of all CO2 emissions due to human activity come from fossil fuels used for generating electricity, with each power plant capable of emitting several million tonnes of CO2 annually. A variety of other industrial processes also emit large amounts of CO2 from each plant, for example oil refineries, cement works, and iron and steel production. These emissions could be reduced substantially, without major changes to the basic process, by capturing and storing the CO2. Other sources of emissions, such as transport and domestic buildings, cannot be tackled in the same way because of the large number of small sources of CO2.
CO2 capture
Capturing CO2 can be applied to large point sources, such as large fossil fuel or biomass energy facilities, major CO2 emitting industries, natural gas production, synthetic fuel plants and fossil fuel-based hydrogen production plants. Broadly, three different types of technologies exist: Post-combustion, pre-combustion, and oxyfuel combustion.
In post-combustion, the CO2 is removed after combustion of the fossil fuel - this is the scheme that would be applied to conventional power plants. Here, carbon dioxide is captured from flue gases at power stations (in the case of coal, this is sometimes known as "clean coal"). The technology is well understood and is currently used in niche markets.
The technology for pre-combustion is widely applied in fertilizer, chemical, gaseous fuel (H2, CH4), and power production. In these cases, the fossil fuel is gasified and the resulting CO2 can be captured from a relatively pure exhaust stream.
An alternate method, which is under development, is chemical looping combustion. Chemical looping uses a metal oxide as a solid oxygen carrier. Metal oxide particles react with a solid, liquid or gaseous fuel in a fluidized bed combustor, producing solid metal particles and a mixture of carbon dioxide and water vapour. The water vapor is condensed, leaving pure carbon dioxide which can be sequestered. The solid metal particles are circulated to another fluidized bed where they react with air, producing heat and regenerating metal oxide particles that are recirculated to the fluidized bed combustor.
CO2 transport
After capture, the CO2 must be transported to suitable storage sites. This is done by pipeline, which is generally the cheapest form of transport, by ship or by land transport when no pipelines are available. Both methods are currently used for transporting CO2 for other applications.
Having captured the CO2 it would need to be stored securely for hundreds or even thousands of years, in order to avoid it reaching the atmosphere. Major reservoirs, suitable for storage, have been identified under the earth's surface and in the oceans. Work to develop many of these options is in progress.
Underground storage of CO2 has taken place for many years as a consequence of injecting CO2 into oil fields to enhance recovery. CO2 is being deliberately stored in a salt water reservoir under the North Sea for climate change reasons. Sleipner is located in the North Sea where Norway's Statoil strips carbon dioxide from natural gas with amine solvents and disposes of this carbon dioxide in a saline formation. The carbon dioxide is a waste product of the field's natural gas production and the gas contains more (9% CO2) than is allowed into the natural gas distribution network. Storing it underground avoids this problem and saves Statoil hundreds of millions of euro in avoided carbon taxes. Sleipner stores about one million tonnes CO2 a year. The Weyburn project started in 2000 and is located in an oil reservoir discovered in 1954 in Weyburn, Southeastern Saskatchewan, Canada. The CO2 for this project is captured at the Great Plains Coal Gasification plant in Beulah, North Dakota which has produced methane from coal for more than 30 years. At Weyburn, the CO2 will also be used for enhanced oil recovery with an injection rate of about 1.5 million tonnes per year. The third site is In Salah, which like Sleipner is a natural gas reservoir located in In Salah, Algeria. The CO2 will be separated from the natural gas and re-injected into the subsurface at a rate of about 1.2 million tonnes per year.The potential capacity for underground storage is large but not well documented. Other geological storage schemes are under development and plans to monitor them are well advanced.
CO2 storage as a liquid and hydrate is a more novel method of geologically sequestering CO2 extracted from flue gases. CO2 would be injected into depleted/exhausted reservoirs and/or aquifers using similar infrastructure used in the North Sea Sleipner gas field, but injection would take place into sub-seabed sediments below deep waters at colder temperatures, where carbon dioxide is in its liquid phase. By injecting below the hydrate stability zone in cold deep sediments, if any upward migration occurred the stored liquid would enter the hydrate stability zone, forming CO2 hydrate, and trapping the underlying liquid. Storage as a liquid and hydrate would allow greater volumes of gas to be trapped within these deep water reservoirs (when compared with supercritical storage such as at Sleipner), and could remain trapped for thousands of years.
More information:
Eurekalert: Cold storage solution for global warming? - Feb. 7, 2007.
CSC UK: What is carbon capture and storage?
Biopact: Abrupt Climate Change and geo-engineering the planet with carbon-negative bioenergy - Dec. 21, 2006.
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