The Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum (CSLF) is a Ministerial-level international climate change initiative that is focused on the development of improved cost-effective technologies for carbon capture and storage (CCS). It also promotes awareness and champions legal, regulatory, financial, and institutional environments conducive to such technologies.

Get involved. Learn how to join the CSLF, as a member government or stakeholder organization.

Mission

Facilitate the development and deployment of CCS technologies via collaborative efforts that address key technical, economic, and environmental obstacles.

Goals

  • Identify key obstacles to achieving improved technological capacity
  • Identify potential areas of multilateral collaborations on CCS technologies
  • Foster collaborative research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) projects reflecting members' priorities
  • Identify potential issues relating to the treatment of intellectual property
  • Establish guidelines for the collaborations and reporting of their results
  • Assess regularly the progress of collaborative RD&D projects and make recommendations on the direction of such projects
  • Establish and regularly assess an inventory of the potential areas of needed research
  • Organize collaboration with all sectors of the international research community, including industry, academia, government and non-government organizations
  • Complement ongoing international cooperation
  • Develop strategies to address issues of public perception
  • Conduct such other activities to advance achievement of the CSLF’s purpose as the members may determine

Why It Matters

The world's leading climate change experts advocate that CCS deployment reduces the costs and risks of achieving both sustainable development goals and climate goals under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). If we are to achieve ambitious climate goals, cost-effective CCS must become widely available internationally, and international collaboration is critical to meeting this goal. Considerable progress has been achieved to date in CCS research, development, demonstration, and global deployment. Yet challenges and barriers to wide-scale CCS deployment remain, and the public and private sectors can do more to advance CCS technologies from the laboratory to the commercial marketplace. 

Members

The 26 CSLF member governments (25 countries plus the European Commission) represent over 3.5 billion people (60% of the world’s population) on six continents and comprise 80% of the world’s total anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Eighteen of the Mission Innovation members are already CSLF members. Membership is open to national governmental entities that are significant producers or users of fossil fuels that have a commitment to invest in CCS RD&D activities. In addition, CCS stakeholders and the academic community are encouraged to participate and actively engage in CSLF activities.  

Learn more about CCS activities being pursued by CSLF members.

Organization

The CSLF Policy Group governs the overall framework and policies of the CSLF.

The CSLF Technical Group reviews the progress of collaborative projects and makes recommendations to the Policy Group on any needed actions.

The CSLF Secretariat organizes CSLF meetings, coordinates communications among CSLF members, and acts as a clearinghouse of information.

Key Governing Documents