Carbon: It’s not just about organic chemistry anymore

Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, 10th August, 2008: There is a concept that the price of carbon is controlled by the cost of Carbon Capture Storage. If we really think about that statement, do we need to know more?

The reality of carbon as a commodity is the European ETS and the UN Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), both have grown sizeably and survive today’s market. The United States is expected to launch its own federal cap and trade system for carbon emissions but legislation is still being blocked by the US senate.

International market cap limits will be set at the final intergovernmental meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Copenhagen, December 2009. The Kyoto protocol currently sets limits and trades carbon credits from independent carbon reduction projects to offending Governments under the CDM system.

The MASDAR initiative, in Abu Dhabi, signed an agreement with a Bahraini petrochemical fertilizer producer, GPIC, this week under CDM regulations. Dr Sultan Al Jaber said, “Masdar is introducing the CDM mechanism to the hydro-carbon based fertilizer industry in the Gulf region” with the initial project capturing over 100,000 tonnes of CO2 for selling to the UN.”

The European Union provides a scheme of credits when carbon is bought from a centralised market by the companies themselves. The companies under the scheme are mainly heavy energy installations– combustion plants, oil refineries, coke ovens, iron and steel plants, and factories making cement, glass, lime, brick, ceramics, pulp and paper. Interestingly, the EU parliament has voted to include the aviation business as part of the ETS scheme from 2012 onwards.

An interesting spin off from the EU ETS is carbon retirement, where consumers can go a step further than ‘off-setting’ and actually ‘retire’ carbon permits belonging to the EU. This has the duel function of permanently removing the carbon permit from ever being bought by serious polluting industry and comes originally from a carbon reduction project.

According to Jeff Chapman, CEO of the Carbon Capture Storage Association, under the ETS “large revenues will be raised by governments through auctioning allowances so, where the political will exists, there should be no shortage of public funding for Carbon Capture Storage and for good investments there is no shortage of corresponding commercial funds.”

The World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi, January 19-21, 2009, looks likely to have a wide range of discussion on the issue of carbon management. Technical streams include: Energy efficiency and carbon, carbon capture storage and insight into carbon policy during the daily global future energy sessions.

Confirmed speakers include:

Björn Stigson, President, World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD)
Peter Basche, Head of JI/CDM projects, E.ON Climate & Renewables GmbH
Henry Derwent, President and CEO, International Emissions Trading Assoc(IETA)
Sam Nader, Director of CMU, Masdar
Dr Saif Al Sayari, Imperial College (Abu Dhabi)
Dr Jeff Chapman, CEO, Carbon Capture and Storage Association
Bronwen Northmore, Director – Cleaner Fossil Fuels, UK Dept for Business, Enterprise and Regularory Reform
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ABOUT THE WORLD FUTURE ENERGY SUMMIT
The World Future Energy Summit held its inaugural event on 21-23 January 2008 in Abu Dhabi under the patronage of H.H. General Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces.

The first summit in January brought together 11,272 attendees from 77 countries, 213 exhibitors from 23 countries, over 80 speakers and 423 international and regional media.

Hosted by Masdar, WFES 08 took place at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre with Credit Suisse as the Principal Sponsor. The Platinum Sponsors were BP, Shell, Standard Chartered and Merrill Lynch and the Gold Sponsors were International Power, Total, Dolphin Energy and Occidental.

Please visit the official website for additional information, www.WorldFutureEnergySummit.com

http://www.reuters.com/
http://unfccc.int/
http://www.ameinfo.com/
http://europa.eu/
http://www.wbcsd.org/
http://www.carbonretirement.com/
http://www.worldfutureenergysummit.com/