Looking to the future

‘We are delighted to be supporting the Carbon Capture Legal Programme as part of our commitment to taking a responsible approach to climate change. We are dedicated to reducing our own impact on the environment by cutting carbon emissions firm-wide by 10 per cent by April 2008, and by offsetting those emissions we are still producing. We hope by supporting the development of this website to help ensure that the complex nature of the law surrounding carbon capture and storage will not act as a barrier to the development of this technology, which has the potential to make a significant reduction to carbon emissions around the world. We also hope that it will stimulate further debate around the use of this technology.’
Guy Morton, senior partner

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is assuming increasing importance as a significant response to climate change and the need for new approaches to energy delivery. The 2006 Stern Report and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recognised its significance as a method for mitigating the continued use of fossil fuels for global energy generation.

The law surrounding CCS is complex and could potentially act as a barrier to its development. To help deal with this, we are providing financial support to the Carbon Capture Legal Programme, a website developed by the University College London (UCL) Centre for Law and the Environment to provide an authoritative, independent and objective source of up to date legal information on CCS. Through the website and a programme of seminars and conferences, UCL’s Centre for Law and the Environment also hopes to promote informed discussion within industry, government, the legal profession, nongovernmental organisations and all those with an interest in CCS legal issues. Other sponsors include Rio Tinto, RPS Group and RWE npower. Representatives from all the donors contribute to the programme’s advisory panel.

At its inception in December 2006, this two-year programme was endorsed by the UK’s Department for Trade and Industry and Department for the Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs.

UCL’s Centre for Law and the Environment will work closely on the project with the University of Oslo’s Research Group in Natural Resources Law. The latter has worked with legal issues related to CCS since 2003 and is the key institution in this field in Norway, which in turn is the leading European country testing the practicalities of sub-seabed CCS.

As the website explains, ‘carbon capture and storage in its simplest form, involves capturing the CO2 from various industrial installations and storing it underground in natural reservoirs, such as depleted oil and gas fields or saline aquifers. Industry is confident that they can both capture carbon dioxide and store it safely underground, using various new and previously tested methods.’ See the website at www.ucl.ac.uk/cclp.