St. Louis Today: Carbon capture and storage essential for coal’s future, IEA chief says
The world will need all the energy it can get from every source available to deal with a ballooning population, the International Energy Agency’s director told a crowd gathered at Washington University on Friday.
But if the world is to keep coal in the mix and avoid devastating climate change, it needs to quickly develop carbon capture and storage technologies, said Maria van der Hoeven, who since 2011 has headed the Paris-based energy agency made up of developed economies in Europe and North America, including the U.S.
“In about 20 to 25 years, there will be 9 billion people on this globe,” Van der Hoeven said in an interview with the Post-Dispatch. “We expect huge growth in energy demand in the emerging economies, especially in Asia. So in our view we will need everything we have, but we have to do it in a way that it’s not harmful to the climate.”
Van der Hoeven has made energy policy and climate impacts one of the hallmarks of her tenure at IEA, which tracks global energy statistics and policy and helps ensure oil supplies.
She isn’t advocating for dumping the most carbon-intensive fuel, coal. Its cheap abundance powered the meteoric rise in quality of life the developed world enjoys and the developing world is moving toward.
However, without carbon capture and storage, earlier retirements of coal capacity will be necessary to keep the world from exceeding a 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, increase in temperatures, the widely-agreed-upon global target to limit catastrophic climate change.
She argued that pricing in the climate impact of carbon emissions would spur innovation in energy technology by putting fossil fuels on “an even playing field” and warning energy that’s too cheap “may make us complacent.”
It’s not just coal that necessitates more carbon capture, she said. Natural gas, while less intense, still emits carbon, as do industrial sources like steel foundries, cement plants and paper mills.
But, Van der Hoeven warned, policymakers have to act fast. “Such breakthroughs will only be possible if coal can stay in business.”
