Nairobi climate talks split on CDM carbon burial

NAIROBI, Nov 9 (Reuters) - U.N. climate talks were split on Thursday

over whether to permit burial of heat-trapping gases in developing

nations under the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol.

"I can't predict whether it's going to be possible for this (meeting)

to reach agreement on that issue given the very wide divergence of

views," Yvo de Boer, the head of the U.N. Climate Secretariat, told a

news conference.

Some delegates at the Nov. 6-17 talks favour giving investors from

industrialised nations credits for projects that would strip

greenhouse gases from Chinese or Indian coal-fired power plants, for

instance, and bury them.

But others fear there are too many uncertainties about capturing and

storing carbon dioxide, such as trying to ensure that geological

storages sites are leak-proof.

Under the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM),

investors in projects such as wind farms in Morocco or hydroelectric

dams in Honduras can claim credits back home for helping avert

greenhouse gases emitted by fossil fuels.

The CDM could channel perhaps $100 billion to developing nations. The

CDM board has previously rejected two proposed methods for allowing

capture and storage of carbon dioxide.

"A number of countries expressed strong interest in including (carbon

capture and storage) under the CDM," de Boer said. "While others

still have nervousness on the technology and that greenhouse gases

might escape."

Still, de Boer said he was hoping for decisions on the CDM, as well

as about whether to widen the CDM to include destruction of the

powerful greenhouse gas HFC23, a by-product of the refrigeration

industry.

"Many concerns and problems were highlighted," about carbon capture,"

said Jose Domingos Miguez, the chair of the CDM executive

board. "There are no modalities and procedure that could cope with

it."

He also pointed to problems with seepage, for instance in the event

of an earthquake, or about whether cement used to plug storage sites

might get eaten away by carbon dioxide.

Some demonstration projects for carbon capture are up and running,

for example at Norwegian oil company Statoil , but high costs

are a barrier. The United States aims to start capturing carbon

dioxide from a coal-fired power plant in 2012, to be built in

Illinois or Texas.

Still, de Boer said that he believed that carbon capture would be

part of the long-term solution to climate change, with or without the

CDM.

For developing nations such as China and India which have cheap

coal "probably carbon capture and storage is going to be one of the

main technologies that is going to allow you to do something about

electricity emissions," he said.

Kyoto obliges 35 nations to cut their domestic emissions by 5 percent

below 1990 levels by 2008-12 in a first legally binding step to avert

catastrophic disruptions to the climate.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L09487815.htm

posted to ClimateConcern