David Miliband

China-European Commission agreement on CCS

I blogged recently about the need to finance environmental measures in developing countries ('A Greener World'). I was pleased to see the European Commission's announcement on Thursday of its intention to help fund carbon capture and storage demonstration with China - particularly since the original EU-China Partnership on Climate Change was launched through a joint declaration during the UK's last EU Presidency in 2005.

We have long argued that providing global certainty on the demonstration of CCS (by 2015) and its deployment (by 2020) is central to any credible climate change agreement which deals effectively with fossil fuel, and coal in particular.

A credible global CCS demonstration effort will require substantive international collaboration between major coal dependent economies. The Commission's announcement is a welcome step in the right direction. Funding CCS demonstration in China would complement the G8's commitment to launch 20 demonstrations in 2010.

More broadly this Commission-Chinese initiative can provide a model for more proposals for collaborative projects between developed countries and emerging economies. Nevertheless we need to act much faster and more ambitiously on CCS and other mitigation technologies as we approach Copenhagen.

Posted at 15:00 30 June 2009 by David Miliband  |  Comments[1]