The legal and political framework for CCS and its implications for a European Utility

AbstractDuring the last 10 years, CCS has been developed and is now widely accepted to be a key technology to significantly reduce the CO2 emissions from the power sector and other large stationary emitters. To make use of the climate mitigation potential of CCS it is however required that some existing key challenges in terms of technology and legal aspects can be overcome. The proposed CCS directive for the European Union could provide the necessary legal framework if the directive is not overburdened by requirements which could not be justified for a technology in its demonstration phase. Like for renewable energies the development of clean fossil power generation technologies requires public support, as the risks for individual companies are just too high. The main critical points based on the adapted amendments by ENVI are related to liability and financial securities, the required composition of the CO2 stream and the introduction of an emission performance standard for new coal fired power plants. All this points will be discussed with some details in this article. It is hoped that based on a constructive dialogue with the stakeholders a widely accepted solution can be found which would pave the road to a low carbon power generation future