Background: Why Carbon Capture and Sequestration?

Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), also know as carbon storage, is gaining momentum as an option to reduce heat-trapping greenhouse gases. CCS requires capturing carbon dioxide from power plants and other industrial facilities, transporting it to suitable locations, injecting it into deep underground geological formations, and monitoring its behavior. A large body of scientific and technical work is underway to overcome barriers to greater deployment of CCS, but policy and regulatory issues need greater attention before these practices can be widely used. For example, there are no widely-approved standards for siting and monitoring of CCS projects. Likewise, no widely-accepted methodology exists to govern accounting of greenhouse gases stored in CCS projects. Standards and methods such as these will be important to ensure that projects are conducted safely.

Strategy

The WRI CCS Project is a stakeholder partnership between businesses, governments, NGOs, and other interested parties designed to build consensus on CCS project guidelines that ensure public confidence in these practices. Our initial work is focused primarily on the deployment of a domestic framework for CCS regulation in the United States, but follow-on work in key developing countries is also expected.

WRI has brought together a diverse group of over 75 stakeholder organizations interested in CCS. In addition to workshops and stakeholder meetings, WRI has also created two working groups to focus on key issues: a siting/monitoring group and a liability/accounting group.

WRI is also developing a series of issue papers to address specific CCS topics, such as public acceptability, long-term liability, greenhouse gas accounting, and the use of public lands.