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The Paris Agreement enters into force thirty days after ratification by at least 55 countries and by countries representing at least 55% of global emissions. It will become legally binding for those countries that sign and ratify it, once it has entered into force.

On 5 October 2016, the double threshold of 55 countries and 55% of global emissions was met, meaning that the Paris Agreement will enter into force on 4 November 2016: Landmark Climate Change Agreement to Enter into Force .

The Agreement opened for signature on 22 April 2016 at a high-level signing ceremony, convened by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, taking place in New York. Signature is the stage before ratification. When a country signs the Paris Agreement, it is obliged to refrain from acts that would defeat its object and purpose. The next step, ratification, signifies a country's intent to be legally bound to the terms of the treaty at the international level.

The article Paris climate deal signing ceremony: what it means and why it matters is a good guide to the steps towards the ratification, who is expected to take part and why early action is important.
Solely for the purposes of Article 21 of the Paris Agreement, the UNFCCC published a table containing information on the most up-to-date total and per cent of greenhouse gas emissions communicated by Parties to the Convention in their national communications, greenhouse gas inventory reports, biennial reports or biennial update reports, as of 12 December 2015. This table forms the underlying data for Climate Analytics' Paris Agreement Ratification Tracker.

Marshall Islands

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Signed & Ratified

"Declaration: "...the Government of the Republic of the Marshall Islands declares its understanding that ratification of the Paris Agreement shall in no way constitute a renunciation of any rights under any other laws, including international law, and the communication depositing the Republic's instrument of ratification shall include a declaration to this effect for international record; FURTHERMORE, the Government of the Republic of the Marshall Islands declares that, in light of best scientific information and assessment on climate change and its impacts, it considers the emission reduction obligations in Article 3 of the Kyoto Protocol, the Doha Amendment and the aforesaid Paris Agreement to be inadequate to prevent global temperature increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-Industrial levels and as a consequence, will have severe implications for our national interests...""

Nauru

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Signed & Ratified

"Declaration: "... the Government, of Nauru declares its understanding that the ratification of the Agreement shall in no way constitute a renunciation of any rights under international law concerning State responsibility [for] the adverse effects of climate change. FURTHER, the Government of Nauru declares that no provisions in the Agreement can be interpreted as derogating from the principles of general international law. AND FURTHER, the Government of Nauru declares its understanding that Article 8 and decision 1/CP.21, paragraph 51 in no way limits the ability of Parties to UNFCCC or the Agreement to raise, discuss, or address any present or future concerns regarding the issues of liability and compensation. The Republic of Nauru put forth its concern intended to recognize and acknowledge its national interest...""

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The Paris Agreement enters into force thirty days after ratification by at least 55 countries and by countries representing at least 55% of global emissions. It will become legally binding for those countries that sign and ratify it, once it has entered into force.

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Reduce carbon emissions by saving ancient forests. Plus, support livelihoods and protect rare wildlife.

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Solar panels aren't just for rooftops - power companies are using them to build massive solar panel farms in the deserts of the U.S., too. On Tuesday, NRG Energy and MidAmerican Solar announced that they've completed building the world's largest operational solar panel farm across 2,400 acres (two Central Parks) near Phoenix, Arizona. The site has been live since late last year, and they're announcing the progress today.

The farm - called the Agua Caliente Solar Photovoltaic Facility - can produce 290 MW of solar electricity, which is enough to power 230,000 homes at peak capacity. California utility PG&E is buying the power under a 25-year contract, and First Solar (s FSLR) both supplied the panels, as well as designed, built and will maintain the project.

The farm was built with a $967 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy, as well as equity from owners NRG Energy and MidAmerican Solar, which is the energy-focused fund owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. The group say 400 jobs were created during construction. MidAmerican bought 49 percent of the $1.8 billion farm in early 2012.

Agua Caliente is important for its sheer size, and shows that solar panels can contribute a substantial amount of electricity if built in the right areas of the U.S. Average natural gas plants can be a similar size to the 290 MW solar farm, though average coal plants usually produce more power.

Solar panels are now at one of their cheapest times in history - weighted average solar panel system prices fell 15 percent in 2013, to reach a new low of $2.59/W in the fourth quarter of 2013, according to a SEIA and GTM report. More solar has been installed in the U.S. in the last 18 months than in the last 30 years, and a lmost a third of new electricity came from solar last year.

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First Solar MidAmerican Solar NRG Solar

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The world's largest solar panel farm is completed and live in Arizona

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Solar panels aren't just for rooftops - power companies are using them to build massive solar panel farms in the deserts of the U.S., too. On Tuesday, NRG Energy and MidAmerican Solar announced that they've completed building the world's largest operational solar panel farm across 2,400 acres (two Central Parks) near Phoenix, Arizona.

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Technology Around the world in 22 carbon capture projects

TECHNOLOGY | October 7. 2014. 11:52

Avoiding dangerous climate change is still possible but will cost more than twice as much if we don't have plenty of carbon capture and storage (CCS).

That's what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded earlier this year.

If the world is going to avoid dangerous warming then CCS is probably going to play a pretty important role. The executive director of the International Energy Agency Maria van der Hoeven says it is "essential". Former UK chief scientist David King has called CCS "the only hope for mankind".

So the opening of the world's first major power station CCS project at Boundary Dam in Canada is being hailed as a historic milestone in efforts to tackle climate change.

Boundary Dam is significant because it's the first commercial scale power station to use the technology, even if CCS is fitted to just one of its generating units.

So where in the world is CCS being developed, and how much carbon will be captured?

We take you around the world in 22 CCS projects that are operational or under construction according to the Global CCS Institute.
The current state of CCS
North America has the largest number of CCS projects by far. The US boasts 16 of the 22 operational or under construction schemes and the lion's share of capture capacity, as the map above shows. We've plotted the location and size of the world's CCS on this map.

The UK doesn't feature on the map. There are five planned CCS projects in the UK but none has reached the construction phase, let alone started operating. Their progress has been rocky at best, despite a government pledge of £1 billion in funding.

Only three of the 22 active global projects are power stations. The remainder include nine industrial facilities manufacturing iron or processing tar sands, for instance. Then there are ten projects at natural gas processing facilities.

Another surprising conclusion is that 16 of the schemes will pump the captured carbon dioxide underground to force more oil out of oil wells. This set-up allows companies to actually make money from capturing carbon rather than it just being a financial burden. But it does raise interesting questions about the net climate impacts.

The Global CCS Institute says these 22 projects will be able to capture 40 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, once they are all operational.
What do we need to fight climate change?
Global emissions are due to reach 40,000 million tonnes this year, with nearly 16,000 million tonnes from coal alone.

So these 22 CCS projects - once they are up to speed - will be shaving 0.1 per cent off global emissions each year.

What scale does CCS need to reach if it to play its part in avoiding dangerous climate change? The International Energy Agency thinks that by 2020 CCS capacity needs to reach a fairly modest 30 operational projects, capturing over 50 million tonnes. (Goal 1 in the chart below.)

That's not too ambitious given the projects that are already underway and a further 34 in the planning stages.

But after 2020 the scale of the industry needs to grow rapidly, to capture at least 2,000 million tonnes in 2030 (goal 2 below), the IEA thinks. And it should expand even further to 7,000 million tonnes in 2050 (goal 3).

Source: IEA CCS technology roadmap 2013

By 2050 the IEA thinks we need a CCS industry capable of capturing 7,000 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year and storing it underground.

This far exceeds the scale of the world's oil industry, which extracted 4,133 million tonnes of oil in 2013, according to BP data. Building a global CCS industry to match and then exceed the oil industry will be no small challenge.

There are challenges, too, in the energy overhead imposed by CCS facilities. Capturing all that carbon, compressing it and injecting it underground uses some of the power that would otherwise have gone to the grid or factory requirements.

The amount of carbon dioxide capture in CCS facilities also grows very rapidly in the most cost-effective IPCC scenarios that are consistent with a two degrees warming target.

It sees capture rates needing to increase at a "remarkable" rate through to 2030 (chart, below left).

It posits a minimum 200-fold increase in CCS capacity by 2030, and the IPCC scenarios see capture capacity grow to around 10,000 million tonnes per year in 2050 (below right) - somewhat higher than the IEA expectation.

The IPCC sees CCS capturing as much as 60,000 million tonnes in 2100 (blue bar, below right), a scale 15 times that of the world's current oil industry.

Source: IPCC Working Group III fifth assessment report
Around the world in 22 CCS plants
So let's take a closer look at where we're starting from. First up, the three power plant CCS projects:

Boundary Dam, Saskatchewan, Canada

Last week's big news relates to the Â£770 million Boundary Dam coal CCS project in Saskatchewan. This is the world's first major power plant CCS scheme. It is owned by Canadian utility firm SaskPower and will capture 90 per cent of the emissions from a 110 megawatt coal unit that has been retrofitted with CCS technology.

The project will eventually capture 1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually from the power station's chimney. The power station has a number of other coal units where carbon will not be captured - it has a total capacity of 824 megawatts and total emissions are 6.7 million tonnes. With CCS, 15 per cent of the power station's total emissions will be captured.

Captured gas will be injected into a nearby oil field in order to squeeze more oil out of the ground, a technique called enhanced oil recovery. Any leftover carbon dioxide will be stored in a deep underground salt-water reservoir, called a saline aquifer.

Kemper County, Mississippi, US
Credit: XTUV0010 via Wikicommons
The Kemper County coal CCS plant in Mississippi will be a completely new power plant using pre-combustion carbon capture. This means it will turn coal into a mixture of hydrogen and carbon dioxide, burning the hydrogen to generate power and capturing the carbon for storage. It's due to start operating in early 2015. Once it does it will be a fairly chunky 582 megawatt plant but will only capture about 65 per cent of emissions - around 3.5 million tonnes a year. Captured emissions will be used for enhanced oil recovery.

Petra Nova CCS project, Texas, US
Industrial CCS projects
The 3.7 gigawatt WA Parish power station in Texas is getting a partial CCS retrofit that should start operating in 2016. The plant burns coal and gas. About 250 megawatts of the coal capacity will get CCS, reducing emissions by about 1.4 million tonnes a year. The plant currently emits 15.8 million tonnes a year so CCS will cut its emissions by 9 per cent. Captured carbon dioxide will be used for enhanced oil recovery.

There are nine industrial CCS projects among the world's 22 active schemes. Some of these are manufacturing sites for fertiliser or steel. Others are processing plants for tar sands or biofuel.

Alberta Carbon Trunk Line, Alberta, Canada

The Alberta trunk line project aims to transport captured carbon dioxide from the province's industrial heartland to boost oil recovery at declining oil fields in central Alberta. The pipeline that will be built to do this will have a capacity of 14.6 million tonnes per year. Two sites - an existing fertiliser plant and a new refinery that will produce oil from tar sand bitumen - are to be the first users of the pipeline, capturing 1.6-2 million tonnes per year from 2015.

Enid Fertilizer, Oklahoma, US

Since 1982 around 0.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year has been captured from the Koch Nitrogen Company plant in Enid, Oklahoma. Yes, you've heard that name before. The captured gas is used for enhanced oil recovery.

Illinois Industrial CCS Project, Illinois, US

CCS is expected to commence at an existing biofuel plant in Decatur, Illinois in 2015. The plant ferments corn to produce ethanol for use as a biofuel. Carbon dioxide is a byproduct of the fermentation, like the gas that gives champagne its fizz. It will capture 1 million tonnes a year that will be stored in a saline aquifer, where test injection has been going on since 2011.

Coffeyville Gasification Plant, Kansas, US

This Kansas fertiliser plant turns petroleum coke, a coal-like oil refinery by-product, into hydrogen and carbon dioxide. The hydrogen is used to make fertiliser and the carbon dioxide captured for enhanced oil recovery. An estimated 400 depleted oil wells will be brought back into operation as a result. CCS started in 2013 and the plant can capture up to 1 million tonnes a year.

Great Plains Synfuel and Weyburn Midale project, North Dakota/Saskatchewan, US/Canada

The Great Plains Synfuel plant in North Dakota turns coal into natural gas, producing carbon dioxide as a byproduct. Since 2000 about half of the gas, some 3 million tonnes a year, is piped across the border to two oil fields in Canada for use in enhanced oil recovery.

Quest, Alberta, Canada

The Quest CCS project is a joint venture between Shell, Chevron and Marathon Oil. It is designed to capture around 1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from a plant that turns heavy Canadian tar sands into useable products. The Â£750 million scheme is due to open in 2015 and will reduce site emissions by 35 per cent. Captured carbon dioxide will be stored in a deep saline aquifer.

Air Products Steam Methane Reformer, Texas, US

This project is based at an oil refinery complex in Port Arthur, Texas. Carbon capture started in 2012 at a steam methane reformer facility that turns natural gas into hydrogen. Captured carbon dioxide is being used for oil recovery. At full capacity, 1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide will be captured per year. However, the site's total emissions increased to 2.7 million tonnes in 2013 against 2.5 million tonnes a year earlier despite the start of capture activities, data reported to the US Environmental Protection Agency show.

Abu Dhabi CCS Project, United Arab Emirates
Gas processing CCS projects
The Emirates Steel Factory in Abu Dhabi will capture 0.8 million tonnes a year from 2016 and use it for enhanced oil recovery. The carbon dioxide is a product of the steel production process and is currently emitted to the atmosphere.

Ten of the world's 22 active CCS projects are at sites that strip carbon dioxide naturally contained in natural gas coming out of production wells. This step is required if the gas is to be burned. Nine of the ten make a virtue of this necessity by selling the carbon dioxide for enhanced oil recovery.

Century Plant, Texas, US

This Texas natural gas processing facility owned by Occidental Petroleum started CCS activity in 2010. The Century plant has the capacity to capture 8.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, the single largest CCS facility in the world. Actual capture rates are likely to be lower because the US shale revolution has cut demand for the plant's more expensive processed natural gas.

Lost Cabin Gas Plant, Wyoming, US

This is a processing facility that strips carbon dioxide from natural gas. It started operation in 1995 but only began CCS in 2013. It will capture about 0.9 million tonnes per year for enhanced oil recovery.

Shute Creek Gas Facility, Wyoming, US

ExxonMobil's Shute Creek gas processing plant started CCS activities in 1986. It takes natural gas that contains a high proportion of carbon dioxide, which is separated for use in enhanced oil recovery. Capture capacity is a chunky 7 million tonnes a year.

Val Verde Gas Plants, Texas, US

Capture began at a series of natural gas processing plants in Val Verde, Texas in the early 1970s, with the carbon dioxide going to enhanced oil recovery projects by pipeline. Capture capacity is 1.3 million tonnes a year, though this is expected to fall as some of the feeder plants are closing.
Credit: Statoil
In Salah, Algeria

This gas processing plant began stripping and storing carbon dioxide from natural gas in 2004. Capture was suspended in 2011 as there had been concerns about possible leakage. At that point, 3.5 million tonnes had been stored in a saline aquifer. Monitoring continues at the site and future storage is under review.

Gorgon Injection Project, Australia

This will be another gas processing plant, stripping out carbon dioxide from natural gas at Barrow island off the coast of Western Australia. It will capture 3.4-4 million tonnes starting from 2016. The captured carbon dioxide will be stored in a saline aquifer.

Sleipner, Norway

The Sleipner facility in the North sea is frequently mentioned as an example of an active CCS project, as it has been operating since 1996. It has a capture capacity of 0.9 million tonnes per year and uses a saline aquifer for storage. The scheme removes carbon dioxide from natural gas and is driven by Norway's tax on CO2. It has injected about 15 million tonnes in total since it started operation.

SnÃ¸hvit, Norway

The SnÃ¸hvit project also captures carbon dioxide at an offshore gas processing facility, this time in the Barents sea. CCS activity commenced in 2008 and the capacity is 0.7 million tonnes per year. Like the Sleipner project it uses a saline aquifer for storage.

Uthmaniyah Demonstration Project, Saudi Arabia

This demonstration project at Uthmaniyah in Saudi Arabia will capture 0.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from 2015 for use in enhanced oil recovery at the world's largest oil field, Ghawar. Capture is from a natural gas processing facility.

Petrobras Lula Oil Field, Brazil

This is an offshore oil and gas field off the southern coast of Brazil. Since 2013, around 0.7 million tonnes per year of carbon dioxide stripped from the gas is being pumped back into the production reservoir to enhance oil recovery.

Main image: Carbon capture and storage plants around the world - preview of interactive. Credit: Rosamund Pearce/Carbon Brief/Cartodb.

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Around the world in 22 carbon capture projects | Carbon Brief

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Technology Around the world in 22 carbon capture projects TECHNOLOGY | October 7. 2014. 11:52 Avoiding dangerous climate change is still possible but will cost more than twice as much if we don't have plenty of carbon capture and storage (CCS). That's what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded earlier this year.

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While other countries debate whether to install wind turbines offshore or in remote areas, Denmark is building them right in its capital. Three windmills were recently inaugurated in a Copenhagen neighbourhood, and the city plans to add another 97.

"We've made a very ambitious commitment to make Copenhagen CO2-neutral by 2025," Frank Jensen, the mayor, says. "But going green isn't only a good thing. It's a must." The city's carbon-neutral plan, passed two years ago, will make Copenhagen the world's first zero-carbon capital.

With wind power making up 33% of Denmark's energy supply, the country already features plenty of wind turbines. Indeed, among the first sights greeting airborne visitors during the descent to Copenhagen's Kastrup airport is a string of sea-based wind towers. By 2020, the windswept country plans to get 50% of its energy from wind power.

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Now turbines are migrating into the city and these ones will cost less than half the price of their sea-based siblings. "If there's space for wind turbines in cities, it should definitely be used," explains Brian Vad Mathiesen, professor of energy planning at Denmark's Aalborg University, where he directs the Sustainable Cities programme.

"Having the energy production closer makes it cheaper, and land-based turbines are the cheapest possible source of energy available today. Installing them also makes the residents more aware of their energy consumption."

Though considerably less charming than it was in its medieval incarnation, the humble windmill is enjoying a 21st-century renaissance. Last year, wind power capacity increased on every continent, according to industry association Global Wind Energy Council. In 2011 Port Rock, Missouri, with a population of 1,300 people, became the first American town to be powered by urban wind turbines, and other smaller urban installations have followed. Now, developers and home owners from Hamburg to New York have started adding rooftop wind turbines.

But no city comes close to Copenhagen's turbine ambitions and, in a recent poll, 89% of its residents supported the plan. "Windmills are a symbol of the new and clean Copenhagen," says resident Susanne Sayers. Fellow Copenhagen citizen Maria Andersen worries about the noise, explaining that she wouldn't want a wind turbine in her neighbourhood. While Copenhagen residents approve of the windmills, they're less willing to live close to one. The answer, the city has decided, is to sell turbine shares.

Each share represents 1,000 kW hours/year, with the profit tax-free. With a typical Copenhagen household consuming 3,500 kW hours/year, a family buying four shares effectively owns its own renewable energy supply. (Due to EU regulations, the turbines' output will be sold on the European market.) To date, 500 residents have bought 2,500 shares. Involving the local population was a smart move, says Vad Mathiesen: "There are a lot of things you can do close to people if it's not too big and if there's a model where residents feel involved and get to share in the profit. Knowing that you, or your neighbours, own a technology creates a very different atmosphere than if a multinational owned it."

Sustainable: tick. Accepted by the population: tick. Complementary to centuries-old city architecture? Hardly.

Granted, the three turbines don't exactly blight the 18th-century city centre, located as they are in a neighbourhood 3km away. According to the mayor's office, none of the remaining 97 turbines will rise in architecturally sensitive areas. But, warns Sascha Haselmayer, CEO of city innovation group Citymart, "with Denmark being a world-leading producer of windmills, there is a risk that the answer to every energy question is windmills".

Plenty of cities are even windier than Copenhagen, which also plans to increase the number of residents using bicycles as a means of further cutting CO2 emissions. Mayor Jensen reports that mayors around the world frequently inquire about Copenhagen's turbines, and he tells them that it's not just a solution for wealthy cities. The zero-carbon plan is "giving very good results in our budget", he reports. (Until 2025, the city will invest €3.6 billion in it.)

And like solar panels, urban wind towers may become inevitable. Several members of the C40 large-city network are now considering following Copenhagen-style plans.

"We've destroyed mountains and lakes in order to support our lifestyle," notes Irena Bauman, an architect and professor of sustainable urbanism at Sheffield University. "Wind turbines are a sign that we're learning to live with nature. I hope we'll have them all over the world."

Yes, she says, they may be aesthetically offensive to some: "But visually better alternatives will come. It's just that we don't have time to wait for them."

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Copenhagen to Be the World's First Carbon-Neutral Capital

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While other countries debate whether to install wind turbines offshore or in remote areas, Denmark is building them right in its capital. Three windmills were recently inaugurated in a Copenhagen neighbourhood, and the city plans to add another 97. "We've made a very ambitious commitment to make Copenhagen CO2-neutral by 2025," Frank Jensen, the mayor, says.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reforestation

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Advantages and disadvantages of major CO2 capture technologies

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It is not possible to develop sub-scale oxy-combustion technology at existing power plants. An oxy-combustion power plant is an integrated plant and oxy-combustion technology development will require commitment of the whole power plant to the technology.

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Canada has switched on the first large-scale coal-fired power plant fitted with a technology that proponents say enables the burning of fossil fuels without tipping the world into a climate catastrophe.

The project, the first commercial-scale plant equipped with carbon capture and storage technology, was held up by the coal industry as a real life example that it is possible to go on burning the dirtiest of fossil fuels while avoiding dangerous global warming.

Saskatchewan's state-owned electricity provider is due to cut the ribbon on the $1.3 billion Canadian project on Thursday. But officials from SaskPower International Inc told guests invited to the ceremony the 110 megawatt plant went live on Tuesday night.

The Boundary Dam power plant promises to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 90% by trapping C02 underground before the gas reaches the atmosphere - making its opening a milestone in the coal industry's efforts to remain viable in a low-carbon economy.

The company said the project would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 1 million tons a year, or the equivalent of taking 250,000 cars off the road, in one of the more fossil fuel-dependent regions of Canada.

Captured CO2 from the Boundary Dam project will be pumped underground and sold to the Cenovus oil company for use in priming nearby oil fields, or buried in geological formations.

"Saskatchewan is number one in the world," said Brad Page, the chief executive of the Global CCS Institute, said. "This is an incredibly important event from our perspective."

Scientists from the United Nations climate panel said last year that without broad deployment of CCS technology most of the world's fossil fuel will have to stay in the ground to avoid dangerous climate change.

Page was cautious however in predicting CCS technology deployed at Boundary Dam would soon be replicated on a large-scale.

He noted the Saskatchewan plant relies on a local source of coal - and on selling on the CO2 to the oil industry - to keep it in the black. Coal also faces intense competition from historically low prices for natural gas, which makes it prohibitively expensive to build new coal plants with CCS.

Even so, the opening of Boundary Dam represents a rare success story for the CCS industry.

The technology has not been fully embraced by the big US coal companies - which are still focused on opposing incoming power plant rules from the Environmental Protection Agency.

CCS is also viewed with deep suspicion by environmental campaigners because its economic viability - so far - depends on using the CO2 to increase oil production, and because it is more expensive than renewable sources of energs.

The technology of carbon capture and storage has been around for years. "This is not a moonshot," Ian Yeates, the SaskPower executive in charge of CCS, told the Guardian earlier this year.

But projects combining power generation and CCS have faced long delays and cost overruns, and run into criticism for receiving government subsidies. A number have been scuttled altogether because of competition from historically low prices for natural gas.

In Mississippi, Southern Company has spent more than $5.5 bn over the last six years trying to bring a new-built CCS project, the Kemper County Energy Facility, into operation. The opening is now delayed until mid-2015.

Only one other CCS project involving power generation is currently on the boards in the US, in Texas.

Boundary Dam claimed its cost over-runs had nothing to do with the CCS technology, but in other construction issues involved in overhauling a 50-year-old power plant. Officials also said they were confident they could bring in the next such CCS project 25% cheaper.

The plant received some CAD$240m in subsidies.

But Yeates acknowledged that at this point the viability of the technology depended on having a nearby source of coal and an additional revenue stream from the enhanced oil recovery. "I think at this stage of the game, because the concept is so new, having a revenue stream from the CO2 is critical to help the economics. But I think eventually that will not be required," he said.

He said the company had seen a lot of interest in the CCS plant from China, India and other places which have large quantities of similar lignite coal.

"There are 7,000 coal-fired turbines on the planet right now and they are not going to be turned off any time soon because people need the energy they produce," Yeates said. "Is there going to be enough gas to replace all those units? We are going to be burning fossil fuels as a world economy for many many decades if not a century or two as energy demands grow...something like carbon capture and sequestration will be of value to deal with that."

Prof Stuart Haszeldine, director of Scottish Carbon Capture & Storage, said: "Boundary Dam is working proof for naysayers, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that full-scale CCS on power generation now exists and works commercially to deliver electricity, with no subsidy." He claimed the plant's opening would "create ripples worldwide."

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Canada switches on world's first carbon capture power plant

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Canada has switched on the first large-scale coal-fired power plant fitted with a technology that proponents say enables the burning of fossil fuels without tipping the world into a climate catastrophe.

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Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is a technology that can capture up to 90% of the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions produced from the use of fossil fuels in electricity generation and industrial processes, preventing the carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.

Furthermore, the use of CCS with renewable biomass is one of the few carbon abatement technologies that can be used in a 'carbon-negative' mode - actually taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

The CCS chain consists of three parts; capturing the carbon dioxide, transporting the carbon dioxide, and securely storing the carbon dioxide emissions, underground in depleted oil and gas fields or deep saline aquifer formations.

First, capture technologies allow the separation of carbon dioxide from gases produced in electricity generation and industrial processes by one of three methods: pre-combustion capture, post-combustion capture and oxyfuel combustion.

Carbon dioxide is then transported by pipeline or by ship for safe storage. Millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide are already transported annually for commercial purposes by road tanker, ship and pipelines. The U.S. has four decades of experience of transporting carbon dioxide by pipeline for enhanced oil recovery projects.

The carbon dioxide is then stored in carefully selected geological rock formation that are typically located several kilometres below the earth's surface.

At every point in the CCS chain, from production to storage, industry has at its disposal a number of process technologies that are well understood and have excellent health and safety records. The commercial deployment of CCS will involve the widespread adoption of these CCS techniques, combined with robust monitoring techniques and Government regulation.

ZEP - The Hard Facts behind Carbon Capture and Storage

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Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is a technology that can capture up to 90% of the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions pro­duced from the use of fossil fuels in electricity generation and industrial processes, preventing the carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.

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This converts the mechanical energy that turns the thing into electrical energy.

In a fossil fuel generator, you burn the fuel to heat water, which pushes steam through a turbine to turn the generator.

For a wind turbine, it just uses the wind to turn gigantic fan blades to turn the generator.

For hydroelectric, the water falling through the dam turns the turbines.

For solar-thermal, an array of mirrors collects and concentrates sunlight to heat a target, which heat can boil water and turn a turbine.

The only one that's really different in the fundamental mechanism is photovoltaic. Photovoltaic utilizes the Photoelectric effect inside a p-n junction (diode), where light pops electrons out of the depleted region of the p-n junction where they are collected at the terminals, generating a voltage and current.

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Answer (1 of 3): Most of them operate on exactly the same principle that fossil-fuel energy sources work. Something is exerted to turn a magnet inside a coil of wire, or a coil of wire inside a magnet. This converts the mechanical energy that turns the thing into electrical energy.

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Sustainable energy is the practice of using energy in a way that "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

The energy transition to meet the world's needs for electricity, heating, cooling, and power for transport in a sustainable way is widely considered to be one of the greatest challenges facing humanity in the 21st century. Worldwide, nearly a billion people lack access to electricity, and around 3 billion people rely on smoky fuels such as wood, charcoal or animal dung in order to cook. These and fossil fuels are a major contributor to air pollution, which causes an estimated 7 million deaths per year. Production and consumption of energy emits over 70% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.

Proposed pathways for limiting global warming to 1.5 °C describe rapid implementation of low-emission methods of producing electricity and a shift towards more use of electricity in sectors such as transport. The pathways also include measures to reduce energy consumption; and use of carbon-neutral fuels, such as hydrogen produced by renewable electricity or with carbon capture and storage. Achieving these goals will require government policies including carbon pricing, energy-specific policies, and phase-out of fossil fuel subsidies.

When referring to methods of producing energy, the term "sustainable energy" is often used interchangeably with the term " renewable energy". In general, renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and hydroelectric energy are widely considered to be sustainable. However, particular renewable energy projects, such as the clearing of forests for the production of biofuels, can lead to similar or even worse environmental damage when compared to using fossil fuel energy. Nuclear power is a zero emission source and while its sustainability is debated, the European Union has chosen it to be the part of a low-carbon energy backbone by 2050.

Moderate amounts of wind and solar energy, which are intermittent energy sources, can be integrated into the electrical grid without additional infrastructure such as grid energy storage. These sources generated 7.5% of worldwide electricity in 2018, a share that has grown rapidly. As of 2019, costs of wind, solar, and batteries are projected to continue falling.

The concept of sustainable development was described by the World Commission on Environment and Development in its 1987 book Our Common Future. Its definition of "sustainability", now used widely, was, "Sustainable development should meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

In its book, the Commission described four key elements of sustainability with respect to energy: the ability to increase the supply of energy to meet growing human needs, energy efficiency and conservation, public health and safety, and "protection of the biosphere and prevention of more localized forms of pollution." Various definitions of sustainable energy have been offered since then which are also based on the three pillars of sustainable development, namely environment, economy, and society.

Environmental criteria include greenhouse gas emissions, impact on biodiversity, and the production of hazardous waste and toxic emissions.

Economic criteria include the cost of energy, whether energy is delivered to users with high reliability, and effects on jobs associated with energy production.

Socio-cultural criteria include the prevention of wars over the energy supply (energy security) and long-term availability of energy.[citation needed ]

The organizing principle for sustainability is sustainable development, which includes the four interconnected domains: ecology, economics, politics and culture.

Providing sustainable energy is widely viewed as one of the greatest challenges facing humanity in the 21st century, both in terms of meeting the needs of the present and in terms of effects on future generations. Bill Gates said in 2011:

If you gave me the choice between picking the next 10 presidents or ensuring that energy is environmentally friendly and a quarter as costly, I'd pick the energy thing.

Worldwide, 940 million (13% of the world) people do not have access to electricity, and 3 billion people rely on dirty fuels for cooking. Air pollution, caused largely by the burning of fuel, kills an estimated 7 million people each year. United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 7 calls for "access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all" by 2030.

Energy production and consumption are major contributors to climate change, being responsible for 72% of annual human-caused greenhouse gas emissions as of 2014. Generation of electricity and heat contributes 31% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, use of energy in transportation contributes 15%, and use of energy in manufacturing and construction contributes 12%. An additional 5% is released through processes associated with fossil fuel production, and 8% through various other forms of fuel combustion. As of 2015, 80% of the world's primary energy is produced from fossil fuels.

In developing countries, over 2.5 billion people rely on traditional cookstoves and open fires to burn biomass or coal for heating and cooking. This practice causes harmful local air pollution and increases the danger from fires, resulting in an estimated 4.3 million deaths annually. Additionally, serious local environmental damage, including desertification, can be caused by excessive harvesting of wood and other combustible material. Promoting usage of cleaner fuels and more efficient technologies for cooking is, therefore, one of the top priorities of the United Nations Sustainable Energy for All initiative. As of 2015, efforts to design clean cookstoves that are inexpensive, powered by sustainable energy sources, and acceptable to users have been mostly disappointing.

Cost-benefit analysis work has been done by a disparate array of specialists and agencies to determine the best path to decarbonizing the energy supply of the world. The IPCC's 2018 Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C says that for limiting warming to 1.5 °C and avoiding the worst effects of climate change, "global net human-caused emissions of would need to fall by about 45% from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching net zero around 2050." As part of this report, the IPCC's working group on climate change mitigation reviewed a variety of previously-published papers that describe pathways (i.e. scenarios and portfolios of mitigation options) to stabilize the climate system through changes in energy, land use, agriculture, and other areas.

The pathways that are consistent with limiting warning to approximately 1.5 °C describe a rapid transition towards producing electricity through lower-emission methods, and increasing use of electricity instead of other fuels in sectors such as transportation. These pathways have the following characteristics (unless otherwise stated, the following values are the median across all pathways):

Renewable energy: The proportion of primary energy supplied by renewables increases from 15% in 2020 to 60% in 2050. The proportion of primary energy supplied by biomass increases from 10% to 27%, with effective controls on whether land use is changed in the growing of biomass. The proportion from wind and solar increases from 1.8% to 21%.

Nuclear energy: The proportion of primary energy supplied by nuclear power increases from 2.1% in 2020 to 4% in 2050. Most pathways describe an increase in use of nuclear power, but some describe a decrease. The reason for the wide range of possibilities is that deployment of nuclear energy "can be constrained by societal preferences."

Coal and oil: Between 2020 and 2050, the proportion of primary energy from coal declines from 26% to 5%, and the proportion from oil declines from 35% to 13%.

Natural gas: In most pathways, the proportion of primary energy supplied by natural gas decreases, but in some pathways, it increases. Using the median values across all pathways, the proportion of primary energy from natural gas declines from 23% in 2020 to 13% in 2050.

Carbon capture and storage: Pathways describe more use of carbon capture and storage for bioenergy and fossil fuel energy.

Electrification: In 2020, around 20% of final energy use is provided by electricity. By 2050, this proportion more than doubles in most pathways.

Energy conservation: Pathways describe methods to increase energy efficiency and reduce energy demand in all sectors (industry, buildings, and transport). With these measures, pathways show energy usage to remain around the same between 2010 and 2030, and increase slightly by 2050.

When referring to sources of energy, the terms "sustainable energy" and "renewable energy" are often used interchangeably, however particular renewable energy projects sometimes raise significant sustainability concerns. Renewable energy technologies are essential contributors to sustainable energy as they generally contribute to world energy security, and reduce dependence on fossil fuel resources thus mitigating greenhouse gas emissions.

In 2018, solar power provided around 3% of global electricity. Solar electricity production uses photovoltaic (PV) cells to convert light into electrical current. Photovoltaic modules can be integrated into buildings or used in photovoltaic power stations connected to the electrical grid. They are especially useful for providing electricity to remote areas. Although generally warranted for 25 years it is claimed that an average solar panel will last 40 years and almost all of it can be recycled.

Currently, photovoltaic (PV) panels only have the ability to convert around 24% of the sunlight that hits them into electricity. At this rate, solar energy still holds many challenges for widespread implementation, but steady progress has been made in reducing manufacturing cost and increasing photovoltaic efficiency. In 2008, researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) developed a method to store solar energy by using it to produce hydrogen fuel from water. Such research is targeted at addressing the obstacle that solar development faces of storing energy for use during nighttime hours when the sun is not shining.

Large national and regional research projects on artificial photosynthesis are designing nanotechnology-based systems that use solar energy to split water into hydrogen fuel and a proposal has been made for a Global Artificial Photosynthesis project.

Research is ongoing in space-based solar power, a concept in which solar panels are launched into outer space and the energy they capture is transmitted back to Earth as microwaves. A test facility for the technology is being built in China.

Solar heating systems generally consist of solar thermal collectors, a fluid system to move the heat from the collector to its point of usage, and a reservoir or tank for heat storage and subsequent use. The systems may be used to heat domestic hot water, swimming pool water, or for space heating. The heat can also be used for industrial applications or as an energy input for other uses such as cooling equipment. In many climates, a solar heating system can provide a very high percentage (20 to 80%) of domestic hot water energy. Heat can be stored through thermal energy storage technologies. For instance, the summer heat can be stored for winter heating. Similar principles are used to store winter cold for summer air conditioning.

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In 2018, wind power provided approximately 6% of the global electricity supply. However, it may be difficult to site wind turbines in some areas for aesthetic or environmental reasons. A large wind farm may consist of several hundred individual wind turbines, and cover an extended area of hundreds of square miles, but the land between the turbines may be used for agricultural or other purposes. A wind farm may also be located offshore.

After about 20 years wind turbine blades need replacing with larger blades, and research continues on how best to recycle them and how to manufacture blades which are easier to recycle.

Among sources of renewable energy, hydroelectric plants have the advantages of being long-lived-many existing plants have operated for more than 100 years. Also, hydroelectric plants are clean, have few emissions and can compensate for variations in wind and solar power. Criticisms directed at large-scale hydroelectric plants include: dislocation of people living where the reservoirs are planned, and release of greenhouse gases during construction and flooding of the reservoir.

However, it has been found that high emissions are associated only with shallow reservoirs in warm (tropical) locales, and recent innovations in hydropower turbine technology are enabling efficient development of low-impact run-of-the-river hydroelectricity projects. Generally speaking, hydroelectric plants produce much lower life-cycle emissions than other types of generation.

In 2015, hydropower supplied 16% of the world's electricity, down from a high of nearly 20% in the mid-to late 20th century. It produced 60% of electricity in Canada and nearly 80% in Brazil. As of 2017, new hydropower construction has stopped or slowed down since 1980 in most countries except China.

Biomass is biological material derived from living, or recently living organisms. As an energy source, biomass can either be burned to produce heat and to generate electricity or converted to modern biofuels such as biodiesel and ethanol.

Biomass is extremely versatile and one of the most-used sources of renewable energy. It is available in many countries, which makes it attractive for reducing dependence on imported fossil fuels. If the production of biomass is well-managed, carbon emissions can be significantly offset by the absorption of carbon dioxide by the plants during their lifespans. However this "carbon debt" may be paid back too late, or (especially in the United States) not properly accounted for. If the biomass source is agricultural or municipal waste, burning it or converting it into biogas also provides a way to dispose of this waste. Bioenergy production can be combined with carbon capture and storage to create a zero-carbon or negative-carbon system, but it is doubtful this can be scaled up quickly enough.

If biomass is harvested from crops, such as tree plantations, the cultivation of these crops can displace natural ecosystems, degrade soils, and consume water resources and synthetic fertilizers. In some cases, these impacts can actually result in higher overall carbon emissions compared to using petroleum-based fuels.

Biofuels are fuels, such as ethanol, manufactured from various types of biomass, such as corn or sugar beet. Biofuels are usually liquid and used to power transport, often blended with liquid fossil fuels such as gasoline, diesel or kerosene. As of 2020 which are sustainable biofuel is being debated.

Cellulosic ethanol has many benefits over traditional corn based-ethanol. It does not take away or directly conflict with the food supply because it is produced from wood, grasses, or non-edible parts of plants. Moreover, some studies have shown cellulosic ethanol to be potentially more cost effective and economically sustainable than corn-based ethanol. As of 2018, efforts to commercialize production of cellulosic ethanol have been mostly disappointing, but new commercial efforts are continuing.

Use of farmland for growing fuel can result in less land being available for growing food. Since photosynthesis is inherently inefficient, and crops also require significant amounts of energy to harvest, dry, and transport, the amount of energy produced per unit of land area is very small, in the range of 0.25 W/m ² to 1.2 W/m ². In the United States, corn-based ethanol has replaced less than 10% of motor gasoline use since 2011, but has consumed around 40% of the annual corn harvest in the country. In Malaysia and Indonesia, the clearing of forests to produce palm oil for biodiesel has led to serious social and environmental effects, as these forests are critical carbon sinks and habitats for endangered species. In 2015, annual global production of liquid biofuels was equivalent to 1.8% of the energy extracted from crude oil. It has been suggested that, due to the limited quantities that can be sustainably produced, it should all be aviation biofuel: because unlike other forms of transport long-distance aviation cannot be powered by batteries, hydrogen, ammonia or fuel cells.

Geothermal energy is produced by tapping into the thermal energy created and stored within the earth. It arises from the radioactive decay of an isotope of potassium and other elements found in the Earth's crust. Geothermal energy can be obtained by drilling into the ground, very similar to oil exploration, and then it is carried by a heat-transfer fluid (e.g. water, brine or steam). Geothermal systems that are mainly dominated by water have the potential to provide greater benefits to the system and will generate more power. Within these liquid-dominated systems, there are possible concerns of subsidence and contamination of ground-water resources. Therefore, protection of ground-water resources is necessary in these systems. This means that careful reservoir production and engineering is necessary in liquid-dominated geothermal reservoir systems. Geothermal energy is considered sustainable because that thermal energy is constantly replenished.

Geothermal energy can be harnessed to for electricity generation and for heating. Technologies in use include dry steam power stations, flash steam power stations and binary cycle power stations. As of 2010, geothermal electricity generation is used in 24 countries, while geothermal heating is in use in 70 countries. International markets grew at an average annual rate of 5 percent over the three years to 2015.

Geothermal power is considered to be a sustainable, renewable source of energy because the heat extraction is small compared with the Earth's heat content. The greenhouse gas emissions of geothermal electric stations are on average 45 grams of carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour of electricity, or less than 5 percent of that of conventional coal-fired plants.

Marine energy is mainly tidal power and wave power. As of 2020, a few small tidal power plants are operating in France and China, and engineers continue to try and make wave power equipment more robust against storms.

Nuclear power plants have been used since the 1950s to produce a zero emission, steady supply of electricity, without creating local air pollution. In 2012, nuclear power plants in 30 countries generated 11% of global electricity. The IPCC considers nuclear power to be a low-carbon energy source, with lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions (including the mining and processing of uranium), similar to the emissions from renewable energy sources. As of 2020 nuclear power provides 50% of European Union low-carbon electricity and 26% of total energy production in Europe.

There is considerable controversy over whether nuclear power can be considered sustainable, with debates revolving around the risk of nuclear accidents, the cost and construction time needed to build new plants, the generation of radioactive nuclear waste, and the potential for nuclear energy to contribute to nuclear proliferation. These concerns have spurred the anti-nuclear movement and led to a decrease in the contribution of nuclear energy to the global electricity supply since 1993. At a global level, opposition to nuclear energy stood at 62 percent in 2011. Public support for nuclear energy is often low as a result of safety concerns, however for each unit of energy produced, nuclear energy is far safer than fossil fuel energy. The uranium ore used to fuel nuclear fission plants is a non-renewable resource, but sufficient quantities exist to provide a supply for hundreds of years.

Traditional environmental groups such as Greenpeace and the Sierra Club are opposed to all use of nuclear power. Individuals who have described nuclear power as a green energy source include philanthropist Bill Gates and environmentalist James Lovelock.

In 2018 nuclear power was chosen by European Union as part of the low-carbon European power system.

Safety assessment of already operating nuclear power plants to extend their lifetimes, perhaps up to 80 years, continues. Regardless of past accidents, nuclear power remains the safest energy source available per unit of energy as compared to other sources.

Newer nuclear reactor designs are capable of extracting energy from nuclear waste until it is no longer (or dramatically less) dangerous, and have design features that greatly minimize the possibility of a nuclear accident. These designs (for instance the molten salt reactor) have yet to be commercialized.

Thorium is a fissionable material used in thorium-based nuclear power. The thorium fuel cycle claims several potential advantages over a uranium fuel cycle, including greater abundance, superior physical and nuclear properties, better resistance to nuclear weapons proliferation and reduced plutonium and actinide production. Therefore, it is sometimes referred as sustainable.

A prospective energy source is nuclear fusion (as opposed to nuclear fission used today). It is the reaction that exists in stars, including the Sun. Fusion reactors currently in construction ( ITER) are expected to be inherently safe due to lack of chain reaction and do not produce long-lived nuclear waste. The fuel for nuclear fusion reactors are very widely available deuterium, lithium and tritium.

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In theory, the greenhouse gas emissions of fossil fuel and biomass power plants can be significantly reduced through carbon capture and storage, although this process is expensive. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the lowest cost path to meeting the 2 °C target includes massive deployment of one specific type of negative emissions technology called bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration, or BECCS. However, achieving this target through BECCS requires more resources than are currently available worldwide. For example, to capture 10 billion tons of CO ₂ per year (GtCO ₂/y) would require biomass from 40 percent of the world's current cropland.

Solar and wind are variable renewable energy (VRE) sources that supply electricity intermittently depending on the weather and the time of day. Overall intermittency can be reduced by combining these sources, and in some places batteries can also be combined to eliminate intermittency completely, so that the whole installation produces dispatchable power.

Most electric grids were constructed for non-intermittent energy sources such as coal-fired power plants. According to the International Energy Agency: "Power system flexibility is required across a range of timescales, and different flexibility hardware solutions and operational practices solutions offer timescale-specific capabilities". Half the world's electricity will need to be wind and solar by 2030, to limit the global rise in temperature to well below 2 °C by 2050. As larger amounts of solar and wind energy are integrated into the grid, it becomes necessary to make changes to the overall system to ensure that the supply of electricity is matched to demand.These changes can include the following:

As of 2019, the cost and logistics of energy storage for large population centers is a significant challenge, although the cost of battery systems has plunged dramatically. For instance, a 2019 study found that for solar and wind energy to replace all fossil fuel generation for a week of extreme cold in the eastern and midwest United States, energy storage capacity would have to increase from the 11 GW in place at that time to between 230 GW and 280 GW, depending on how much nuclear power is retired.

Pumped-storage as well as load following coal, fossil gas and nuclear power plants are the most widespread techniques for balancing intermittent energy sources as of 2020.

As of 2020 in the European Union this has become the de facto standard in countries which decided to shut down their zero-emission nuclear power plants such as Germany. This practice has led to a debate between Germany, which made significant investments in fossil gas imports but failed its emission reduction goals, and France, whose energy mix is largely composed of nuclear power and whose average CO2 emissions from energy sector are 5x smaller than Germany.

Some technologies provide short-term energy storage, while others can endure for much longer. Bulk energy storage is currently dominated by hydroelectric dams, both conventional as well as pumped. Grid energy storage is a collection of methods used for energy storage on a large scale within an electrical power grid.

Common examples of energy storage are the rechargeable battery, which stores electricity as chemical energy readily reconvertible to electricity to return to the grid, the hydroelectric dam, which stores energy in a reservoir as gravitational potential energy, and ice storage tanks, which store ice frozen by cheaper energy at night to meet peak daytime demand for cooling.

The relative roles of waste heat, solar thermal, geothermal, electrification, biomass and hydrogen in the production of sustainable heat are being debated.

Hydrogen is a zero-emission fuel that can be produced by using electrolysis to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen can play a role for storing energy in a sustainable energy system if the electricity used to produce it is generated from sustainable sources, such as wind or solar. Hydrogen can be produced when there is a surplus of intermittent renewable electricity, then stored and used to generate heat or to re-generate electricity. Hydrogen can be distributed by ship or through pipelines. Up to 20% can be mixed into natural gas pipelines without changing pipelines or appliances, but as hydrogen is less energy-dense this would only save 7% of emissions. As of 2020 trials are underway on how to convert a natural gas grid to 100% hydrogen, in order to reduce or eliminate emissions from residential and industrial natural gas heating. It can be used to power vehicles that have hydrogen fuel cells. As it has a low energy to volume content, it is easier to use in hydrogen-powered ships or heavy road vehicles than in cars and airplanes.

As of 2018, very little of the world's supply of hydrogen is created from sustainable sources. Nearly all hydrogen is created by steam methane reforming (SMR), which results in high greenhouse gas emissions but is currently cheaper than creating hydrogen via electrolysis. Although some carbon from SMR could be captured the process can be made more sustainable by using autothermal reforming with carbon capture and storage technologies to remove most of the carbon dioxide that is emitted.

Moving towards energy sustainability will require changes not only in the way energy is supplied, but in the way it is used, and many say that reducing the amount of energy required to deliver various goods or services is essential. Others agree that energy efficiency is desirable, but say that electrification and its automatic efficiency gains (at least in the USA as of 2020) would be sufficient to meet the Paris Agreement goals if pursued vigorously enough. Opportunities for improvement on the demand side of the energy equation are as rich and diverse as those on the supply side, and often offer significant economic benefits.

Efficiency slows down energy demand growth so that rising clean energy supplies can make deep cuts in fossil fuel use. A 2011 historical analysis demonstrated that the rate of energy efficiency improvements was generally outpaced by the rate of growth in energy demand, due to continuing economic and population growth. Because carbon emissions over the period studied were coupled with total energy use, despite energy efficiency gains total carbon emissions continued to increase. Thus, given the thermodynamic and practical limits of energy efficiency improvements, slowing the growth in energy demand has been said to be essential. However, unless clean energy supplies come online rapidly, slowing demand growth will only begin to reduce total emissions; reducing the carbon content of energy sources is also needed. Any serious vision of a sustainable energy economy thus requires commitments to both renewables and efficiency.

As of 2019 fossil fuels still supply over 80% of world energy consumption and, although energy consumption per person is expected to peak in the 2020s, the use of sustainable energy is not increasing fast enough to meet the 2 degree goal of the Paris Agreement.

As of 2019 forecasts for the 400 GW of nuclear power capacity, which in 2018 supplied 10% of the world's electricity, vary from an 8% decrease to a 25% increase by 2030.

In 2020, the International Energy Agency warned that the economic turmoil caused by the coronavirus outbreak may prevent or delay companies from investing in green energy. The outbreak could potentially spell a slowdown in the world's clean energy transition if no action is undertaken.

On average for a given unit of energy produced, the greenhouse gas emissions of natural gas are around half the emissions of coal when used to generate electricity, and around two-thirds the emissions of coal when used to produce heat: however reducing methane leaks is imperative. Natural gas also produces significantly less air pollution than coal. Building gas-fired power plants and gas pipelines is therefore promoted as a way to phase out coal and wood burning pollution (and increase energy supply in some African countries with fast growing populations or economies), however this practice is controversial. Opponents argue that developing natural gas infrastructure will create decades of carbon lock-in and stranded assets, and that renewables create far less emissions at comparable costs. The life-cycle greenhouse-gas emissions of natural gas are around 40 times the emissions of wind and nuclear energy.

Electrification is a key part of using energy sustainably, as many mainstream sustainable energy technologies are electricity-based. As of 2018 860 million people are estimated to have no electricity, of whom 600 million are in sub-saharan Africa. According to a 2019 report by the IEA, in sub-saharan Africa "current and planned efforts to provide access to modern energy services barely outpace population growth" and would still leave over half a billion people without electricity and over a billion without clean cooking by 2030. But according to the report this can be vastly improved, in part by accelerating electrification.

According to the IPCC, both explicit carbon pricing and complementary energy-specific policies are necessary mechanisms to limit global warming to 1.5 °C.

Energy-specific programs and regulations have historically been the mainstay of efforts to reduce fossil fuel emissions. Successful cases include the building of nuclear reactors in France in the 1970s and 1980s, and fuel efficiency standards in the United States which conserved billions of barrels of oil. Other examples of energy-specific policies include energy-efficiency requirements in building codes, banning new coal-fired electricity plants, performance standards for electrical appliances, and support for electric vehicle use. Nevertheless fossil fuel subsidies remain a key barrier to a transition to a clean energy system.

Carbon taxes are an effective way to encourage movement towards a low-carbon economy, while providing a source of revenue that can be used to lower other taxes or to help lower-income households afford higher energy costs. Carbon taxes have encountered strong political pushback in some jurisdictions, whereas energy-specific policies tend to be politically safer. According to the OECD climate change cannot be curbed without carbon taxes on energy, but 70% of energy-related CO2 emissions were not taxed at all in 2018. Some studies estimate that combining a carbon tax with energy-specific policies would be more cost-effective than a carbon tax alone.

Bruckner, T.; et al. (2014). "Chapter 7: Energy Systems" (PDF). Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report 2014. pp. 511-597.

IPCC, 2018: Global Warming of 1.5°C. An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty [V. Masson-Delmotte, P. Zhai, H. O. Pörtner, D. Roberts, J. Skea, P.R. Shukla, A. Pirani, W. Moufouma-Okia, C. Péan, R. Pidcock, S. Connors, J. B. R. Matthews, Y. Chen, X. Zhou, M. I. Gomis, E. Lonnoy, T. Maycock, M. Tignor, T. Waterfield (eds.)].

Kutscher, C.F.; Milford, J.B.; Kreith, F. (2018). Principles of Sustainable Energy Systems, Third Edition. Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Series. CRC Press. ISBN 978-0-429-93916-7.

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Sustainable energy is the practice of using energy in a way that "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." The energy transition to meet the world's needs for electricity, heating, cooling, and power for transport in a sustainable way is widely considered to be one of the greatest challenges facing humanity in the 21st century.

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Renewable energy - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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From the end of 2004, worldwide renewable energy capacity grew at rates of 10-60% annually for many technologies. For wind power and many other renewable technologies, growth sped up in 2009 relative to the previous four years. More wind power was added during 2009 than any other renewable technology.

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Case study of changing energy use: The UK - Energy - GCSE Geography Revision - BBC Bitesize

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The UK government wants to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions. It also wants to increase the amount of energy which comes from renewable sources. By 2020 European Union targets state that 20% of energy must come from renewable sources. Each member state of the EU may have a different target, as 20% is an average figure for the EU.

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Need-to-know information about renewable energy.

Read this guide for essential facts and information about the types renewable energy and your green energy options.

For more information about some of the terms we use, click on the highlighted words or see our renewable energy glossary.

Green electricity is generated from natural and renewable energy sources that have less of an impact on the environment than fossil fuels. If you're looking for concreate examples of what is renewable energy, then energy produced using solar energy, wind energy and water power (hydroelectricity) all qualify.

We call these green energy sources types of "renewable energy" because, unlike fossil fuels, such as coal and oil, green energy sources will not run out.

The gas we use in our homes is not renewable, since we rely on gas reserves underground. To reduce the environmental impact of the gas you use, you can sign up to a green gas tariff - your gas supplier will offset the gas you use by producing renewable electricity to feed into the National Grid.

Find out which suppliers offer green energy plans.

Using renewable energy or green energy enables you to reduce the carbon dioxide that goes into the atmosphere because of the energy you use, which is known as your carbon footprint. This helps to reduce climate change.

By using renewable energy sources like solar energy, we also reduce our dependence on fossil fuel gas and oil reserves, which are becoming more expensive and difficult to find. It also reduces our dependence on imported fossil fuels, improving our energy security.

The government has set a target to produce 15% of the UK's energy from renewable energy sources by 2020 and cut the country's carbon emissions by 34% by 2020.

A green energy plan is an option offered by an energy provider that lets you support their use of renewable energy, such as solar energy.

Options for green energy tariffs include:

Energy match: your energy supplier matches some or all of the electricity you use by producing renewable energy that they feed into the National Grid.

Green fund: your supplier funds renewable energy or environmental projects on your behalf.

Carbon offset: your supplier offsets the CO2 emissions from the energy you use by planting trees or investing in CO2 reducing projects.

To help you make an informed choice of green energy plan, the Green Energy Certification Scheme (GECS) gives a green energy plan a stamp of approval if it meets certain standards, so you can be confident in your choice of green plan.

See a list of GECS-approved green energy plans.

Some green energy plans do cost a little more - the money is used to fund renewable energy production or environmental projects. However, hopefully you should be able to find a number of green energy options that suit your wallet. With uSwitch you can find a green energy plan that offers you the best deal.

After switching to a green energy plan, you can save energy in other ways - for example, by following some simple energy-saving tips.

The major electricity suppliers in the UK provide green tariffs. There are also green electricity suppliers that specialise in green energy production.

uSwitch can help you find a green energy supplier. To locate suppliers in your area, compare gas and electricity prices with uSwitch.

Whereas energy companies have schemes to generate renewable energy on a large scale, it's also possible for you to generate your own renewable energy.

This small-scale production is called microgeneration and refers to systems under 50kW for electricity or 45kW in the case of heat. It typically takes the form of solar energy, wind energy, or biomass.

The government currently offers incentives to individuals who generate their own electricity, with a scheme called Feed-in Tariffs (FiTs), and there are plans to introduce an incentive for renewable heat through the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI).

Payments under the RHI will focus on 'off-gas' locations first, so it's a good idea to check the latest information about subsidies from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC).

You can use solar energy to generate electricity or heat water:

Solar electricity uses photovoltaic (PV) cells to convert sunlight into renewable electricity. You can install roof tiles covered in PV cells. They generate solar energy in any weather and are most effective on south-facing roofs. You can use the solar electricity for your lights and household appliances or sell renewable energy back to the National Grid.

Solar water heating uses dark panels on your roof to absorb solar energy as heat. By running tubes of cold water through these panels, you can use solar energy to heat water for your home.

Solar energy is a clean and renewable energy source, and solar panels produce solar energy for free. However, solar energy panels can be expensive to produce and install, so it might take several years for the savings on your energy bills to match your initial investment.

Because UK sunlight is not very strong, energy companies can't build solar power plants to produce solar energy on a large scale - but individual homes can generate enough solar energy to make a real difference.

Wind energy uses power from the wind to turn turbines and generate renewable energy.

Energy companies generate renewable energy in wind farms - hillsides covered in giant wind turbines. You can also generate your own renewable energy from the wind by installing a small wind turbine at your house or on your land.

Like solar energy, wind energy provides clean renewable energy for free - but unlike solar energy, it's particularly suited to the UK's windy weather.

Large-scale wind energy farms take up space, and are considered ugly by some people. There have been complaints about noise as well, although these tend to be anecdotal.

Small-scale wind turbines can be expensive to buy and install, but if they are appropriately sited and the household benefits from Feed-in Tariffs, then some of these costs can be offset.

As well as solar energy and wind energy, there are various other renewable energy sources, including hydro electricity, biomass, geothermal energy and biodiesel.

Nuclear energy is not renewable - it relies on nuclear fuel which must be mined out of the earth, much like coal. Some people consider nuclear energy to be green because it does not produce carbon dioxide. But nuclear energy does produce nuclear waste, which is difficult to dispose of safely.

All these energy sources have advantages and disadvantages - but all renewable energy sources produce far less pollution and are more sustainable than burning coal, oil and gas.

Using biodiesel means we burn less fossil fuels, but growing biodiesel crops takes a lot of land, which arguably could be used for food production, and it increases the pesticides and fertilisers we use.

Using renewable energy like solar electricity will reduce your carbon footprint because it does not produce carbon dioxide.

We can try to reduce climate change by using renewable energy instead of fossil fuels.

Hydroelectric power plants usually involve damming rivers or putting barriers in the sea. Because of this, some people argue that this form of renewable energy is bad for the environment.

Many people argue that nuclear energy is renewable energy as it does not use fossil fuels directly. However, like fossil fuels, nuclear fuels will eventually run out.

Nuclear energy does not produce carbon dioxide, so it is sometimes considered to be a green form of energy. However, carbon emissions do occur during the mining and processing of the nuclear fuel, and nuclear energy produces nuclear waste, which is difficult to dispose of safely.

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Need-to-know information about renewable energy. Read this guide for essential facts and information about the types renewable energy and your green energy options. For more information about some of the terms we use, click on the highlighted words or see our renewable energy glossary.

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by Chris Woodford. Last updated: March 4, 2017.

Earth is warming, glaciers are thawing, seas are rising-and so far we're doing little or nothing to stop it. The consequences of climate change could be utterly catastrophic unless we act very soon. What can we do? One option is to switch to renewable energy that produces less carbon dioxide (CO2)-the gas most of the world's scientists consider is responsible for global warming. But that will take decades, at least, and in the meantime we're still locked into using coal, gas, and oil and producing even more CO2. Another option is to keep burning fossil fuels but to prevent the CO2 they release from entering the atmosphere. That idea is called carbon capture and storage (CCS) and it's currently one of the hottest topics in the field of energy technology. What is it and how does it work? Let's take a closer look!

Photo: Engineers are certain we could stop fossil-fueled power plants from releasing carbon dioxide, but is it the quickest and most cost-effective way to tackle climate change? Photo courtesy of US DOE/NREL (US Department of Energy/National Renewable Energy Laboratory).

What's the problem with carbon dioxide?

Let's quickly recap on global warming and climate change. The current scientific consensus is that they're "very likely" happening because people are using huge quantities of fossil fuels such as coal in power plants and oil in cars and trucks. Burning carbon-rich fuels releases very handy supplies of energy, but it involves a chemical reaction called combustion that lets carbon dioxide (CO2) gas escape into the atmosphere as a byproduct. This invisible (and mostly harmless) gas builds up and wraps around our planet like a blanket, making it hotter than it would otherwise be. Now a warming planet might sound "cool" if you're currently shivering away in winter, but what global warming actually means in practice is a major change in Earth's climate that will make the planet much harder for most people to live on. Find out more in our main article on global warming and climate change.

Photo: The world has thousands of power plants like this one, many of them burning coal and belching carbon dioxide into the air. Photo by Warren Gretz courtesy of US DOE/NREL (US Department of Energy/National Renewable Energy Laboratory).

What is carbon capture and storage?

If you're got a power plant burning mountains of coal and releasing clouds of carbon dioxide into the air through its smokestacks, solving the problem sounds simple in theory. All you have to do is catch the CO2 as it drifts upward through the pipe and stick it somewhere it won't cause any problems (like underground or deep in the ocean). This idea is called carbon capture and storage (CCS). It's an artificial version of carbon sequestration, which is what plants and trees do naturally during photosynthesis: powered by sunlight, they suck carbon dioxide from the air and use it to build their roots, shoots, and leaves. As the name suggests, CCS involves two separate processes-carbon capture and carbon storage-so let's look at each of those in turn.

Capturing carbon

There are essentially three ways to capture the carbon dioxide from a power plant: before the fuel is burned (precombustion), after the fuel is burned (postcombustion), or by burning the fuel in more oxygen and storing all the gases produced as a result (oxyfuel).

Precombustion

Artworks: Precombustion carbon capture and storage removes carbon from coal before it gets to a power plant.

In precombustion, the aim is to remove the carbon from coal fuel before it's burned. The coal is reacted with oxygen (O2) to make syngas (synthesis gas), a mixture of carbon (CO) monoxide and hydrogen (H2) gases. The hydrogen can be removed and either burned directly as fuel or compressed and stored for use in fuel-cell cars. Water is added to the carbon monoxide to make carbon dioxide (which is stored) and additional hydrogen, which is added to the hydrogen previously removed.

Postcombustion

Artworks: Postcombustion carbon capture and storage removes carbon dioxide after the carbon has been burnt in a power plant.

In postcombustion, we're trying to remove carbon dioxide from a power station's output after a fuel has been burned. That means waste gases have to be captured and scrubbed clean of their CO2 before they travel up smokestacks. The scrubbing is done by passing the gases through ammonia, which is then blasted clean with steam, releasing the CO2 for storage.

Oxyfuel (oxycombustion)

CCS would be much easier if power plants produced pure CO2 as their smokestack waste. Then, instead of laboriously separating out the CO2 from other waste gases, we could trap the entire output from the smokestacks and store the lot. The trouble is that power plants don't produce pure CO2: because there's often not enough oxygen for complete combustion they produce other pollutant gases as well. One way to purify the exhaust is to blow extra oxygen into the furnace so the fuel burns completely producing relatively pure steam and CO2. Once the steam is removed (by cooling and condensing it to make water), the CO2 can be stored.

Which is best?

Each of these techniques has its advantages and disadvantages. In theory, postcombustion CCS can be applied to any power plant burning any carbon-based fuel, so it could be retrofitted (at a price) to the world's thousands of existing power plants. Precombustion and oxyfuel both alter the fuel before it enters the station and are more suitable for newly built plants. Postcombustion is the best option for cleaning up the plants we have already; precombustion and oxyfuel could help us build cleaner plants in future.

Storing carbon

Once you've captured the carbon dioxide, there's the small matter of where you store it. Carbon dioxide is a gas under everyday conditions so it takes up a huge amount of space-and we're producing it in vast quantities too. Stuffing it in a tank somewhere and closing the lid isn't really an option: the tank would probably need to be the size of a country! The best option is to turn the carbon dioxide into a liquid (so it takes up a tiny fraction as much room) and then pump it either deep underground or into the deep ocean where it will remain safely for perhaps 1000 years or more.

Storing carbon dioxide under Earth's surface is called geo-sequestration and uses things like worked out oil fields, aquifers, or other rock formations deep underground. It might sound like hugely impractical science fiction, but oil companies already routinely pump CO2 into underground rocks to help them flush oil to the surface of declining wells, so it's actually a reasonably well-understood process. Less well understood is the idea of storing CO2 in the oceans. The main problem here is that carbon dioxide reacts with water to form acid, so the oceans could become significantly more acidic with potentially devastating consequences for marine ecosystems. But another difficulty is that the CO2 would also eventually return to the atmosphere. A third option is to store CO2 by reacting it with minerals, though that requires a lot more energy.

Pros and cons of carbon capture and storage

Most people are either heavily in favor of CCS technology or heavily against. Environmentalists tend to see CCS as a distraction from the need to convert humankind quickly to renewable energy. They argue that investing in carbon capture is a waste of money when we could be putting the same investment to better use perfecting such things as building insulation, solar energy, wind turbines, tidal power-and perhaps even nuclear plants (themselves hugely controversial). Another drawback is that CCS uses considerable extra energy (increasing the coal needed by as much as 40 percent) and could double the cost of electricity; both are very unwelcome at a time when energy is becoming increasingly expensive and humans are having trouble meeting their energy needs.

Photo: Problem or solution? "Clean coal" or "dirty pollutant"? Photo by David Parsons courtesy of US DOE/NREL (US Department of Energy/National Renewable Energy Laboratory).

Where opponents see coal as a problem-a filthy polluting fuel that should be left underground at all costs-supporters prefer to call it "clean coal" and see it as a part of the solution. Their argument is that the world is hugely dependent on a giant fleet of aging power plants that will continue to be operational for decades to come. According to this view, if humans must make dramatic cuts in their carbon emissions while old power plants are still running, and before other technologies can be rolled out, back-fitting CCS could be a vital way of cutting the world's overall emissions when it matters most. The latest biomass power plants are already carbon neutral, because biomass (such as fast-growing trees and straw) takes in CO2 as it grows and releases it again when it's burned. So if we fitted CCS to them, we'd effectively have a way of pulling net carbon dioxide from the atmosphere -which would be even better.

Unfortunately, despite some very promising small-scale experiments, CCS is still a relatively untried technology and the argument is unlikely to be settled one way or the other until more work has been done to demonstrate its real costs and benefits.

Carbon capture and storage in other industries

It's important to remember that power plants aren't the only source of smokestack carbon dioxide emissions; cement, steel, and fertilizer plants also release large amounts of CO2. Although modern plants are more efficient than older ones, significant cuts in industrial emissions can only really be achieved by applying CCS to these sorts of plants as well. In the case of cement-making, pre-combustion doesn't apply, which leaves post-combustion and oxyfuel. Several pilot schemes are currently in place around the world to see which method works best. A number of fertilizer plants are also capturing their CO2 for reuse. In 2011, for example, Chaparral Energy started piping CO2 captured from a fertilizer plant in Kansas to Oklahoma to increase oil production from its fields there.

Find out more

On this site

You might like these other articles on our site covering similar topics:

General background

Videos

News articles

Coal industry casts itself as a clean energy player by Clifford Krauss. The New York Times, 26 February 2017. Traditionally opposed to climate science, coal industry figures are now positioning themselves as part of the solution.

Can carbon capture prosper? by John Schwartz, The New York Times, 2 January 2017. The Petra Nova plant in Thompson, Texas seems set for a small-scale, successful demonstration of CCS in the United States.

CO2 turned into stone in Iceland in climate change breakthrough by Damian Carrington, The Guardian, 9 June 2016. A promising new form of CCS rapidly turns carbon dioxide into carbonate minerals (the ingredients of limestone).

Massive carbon capture investment 'needed to slow global warming' by Fiona Harvey and Kylie Noble, The Guardian, 4 April 2016. Oxford University's Myles Allen argues that CCS is essential for reducing carbon dioxide emissions, whether we switch to renewable energy or not.

Companies Struggle to Make Carbon Capture Viable by Mark Scott, New York Times, 5 October 2015. Numerous expensive demonstration projects around the world have failed to demonstrate that CCS is viable.

Drax pulls out of £1bn carbon capture project: BBC News, 25 September 2015. A major energy company has abandoned plans for a new CCS project on the grounds that it's no longer financially viable.

EU green light for UK carbon capture and storage project by Matt McGrath, BBC News, 17 April 2014. The EU agrees to fund a CCS project that will bury carbon dioxide under the North Sea.

Big Utility Puts Carbon Capture Technology to the Test by Jessica Leber, New York Times, September 14, 2009. A report on attempts to make CCS work in the United States.

Will carbon capture work? by Roger Harrabin, BBC News, 24 April 2009. A fairly pessimistic appraisal of CCS by the BBC's environment analyst.

Arguments for and against

Advocates

The Carbon Capture & Storage Association: A group of UK-based businesses promoting CCS technology. Website contains some useful background papers and materials.

Overthrow of New King Coal by Tom Burke. A former UK government environment adviser argues that much more coal will be burned whether we like it or not, so it should be burned using CCS.

The Future of Coal: A report from MIT maps out a future where coal is burned more cleanly.

Opponents

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How does carbon capture and storage work?

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by Chris Woodford. Last updated: March 4, 2017. Earth is warming, glaciers are thawing, seas are rising-and so far we're doing little or nothing to stop it. The consequences of climate change could be utterly catastrophic unless we act very soon. What can we do?

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Carbon Capture Explained | How It Happens | The New York Times

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http://igeo.tv/category/videos/tematica/medio-ambiente/ The Kyoto Protocol is a protocol to the UNFCCC Convention United Nations Framework on Climate Change, an international agreement that aims to reduce emissions of six greenhouse gases that cause global warming: carbon dioxide (CO2) gas methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), plus three fluorinated industrial gases: hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs) and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), in an approximate percentage of at least 5%, within the period runs from 2008 to 2012, compared to 1990 emissions.

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Kyoto Protocol - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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The Kyoto Protocol is a plan created by the United Nations for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that tries to reduce the effects of climate change, such as global warming. The plan says that countries that adopt (follow) the Kyoto Protocol have to try to reduce how much carbon dioxide (and other " greenhouse gases" that pollute the atmosphere) they release into the air.

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Get tips on what you can do about Global Warming and changing climate. Even if you do not aggree with the facts, these simple things can help you to be more friendly to our environment

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You Can Help Stop Global Warming   Plant Trees

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How trees can help reduce climate change (England)

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Information on how trees can help reduce climate change

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