Remarks given by
Robert S. Kripowicz
Acting Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy
U.S. Department of Energy
before the
Fourth International Conference on
Greenhouse Gas Control Technologies

Conference Center
Interlaken, Switzerland
August 31, 1998

We are here today to discuss a subject that holds profound importance for current and future generations. We are here because we recognize the significant technical challenges presented by this relatively new field of environmental exploration. I suspect that many of us are excited by these challenges - and especially by the possibilities that await us if those challenges can be successfully met.

I would hope that we are here today because we are pioneers - because we are seeking the R&D path that leads toward practical, affordable greenhouse gas control, and because we see that path as one of society's next great scientific and technological ventures.

I would hope we are here because we understand that what might begin these next few days in Interlaken could ultimately benefit every man, woman and child on the face of this planet for generations to come.

All of us know the issue at hand. By 2020, the world's appetite for energy is likely to be twice what it was in 1990. Without changes in energy and environmental policies or technologies -- or both -- global carbon emissions are forecast to increase by more than 80 percent from 1990 levels. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, the most heavily-emitted greenhouse gas, are currently about 30 percent above pre-industrial levels and rising.

But I believe it is important that we recognize that the next 20 years is just a snapshot...a brief moment in time in the context of the globe's carbon cycle. Today we must understand the potential ramifications of climate change and begin to take the first steps....but as we define our actions for tomorrow, our horizon must be much farther into the future.

The authors of a recent article in the Foreign Affairs journal put it quite well, I believe. Haggling over near-term targets - whether the Kyoto accord is or is not the solution - misses the point, they wrote. If we confine our discussion to whether emissions trading systems or joint implementation mechanisms are, or aren't, workable solutions, we run the risk of losing sight of the real issue.

Climate change is NOT a 10- or 20-year challenge. It is a challenge measured not in years, but in generations. And as we debate the positives and negatives of Kyoto, we cannot lose sight of the need to better understand the impacts of greenhouse gas concentrations over the next 50 or 100 years or more. Kyoto is only a beginning - a first step.

By the time we approach the end of the next century, the world's population could be double that of today. Most - perhaps 90 percent - of this population growth is expected to occur in the less developed countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Much of it will occur in nations undergoing rapid economic development. As a consequence, we could see world energy consumption TRIPLE over the next 100 years. And 80 percent of the world's anthropogenic CO2 emissions are associated with energy use.

That is why in our portfolio of action, we cannot focus solely on short-term options that reduce carbon emissions in one country or another. We must include - perhaps even concentrate on - options that offer progress toward stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations on a global scale. That is the challenge. That is why we are here today.

Let me ask you to think about this for a moment: When all the debate over the right approach to mitigate global climate change is boiled down to its bare essence, there are only three technical options available to us:

One is to reduce the carbon intensity of fuels. That is underway. The world has moved from the most carbon intensive fuel of all - wood - to coal, then to oil, and now increasingly, to natural gas. Eventually, over generations, we might evolve to a methane economy, perhaps to a hydrogen economy or to another yet-to-be-developed energy source. Renewable energy is obviously an option for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Considerable technological progress has been made in our programs and elsewhere in recent years. Photovoltaic power systems are beginning to show real promise in non-grid connected applications. Likewise, wind energy has benefitted from technological improvements.

But a rapid, wholesale transition to renewables is not practicable. Certainly there would be huge costs, and they would come at a time when many nations are devoting scarce resources to achieving economic goals. There would also be environmental issues - the strain on land use for biomass, wind and hydropower expansion and the possible displacement of people and habitat.

Nuclear power is another choice, but in the United States, it will remain a controversial option until we solve the waste disposal issue. Nevertheless, advanced design reactors are being built in Taiwan and Japan, and China has a significant number of nuclear plants under consideration.

The bottom line is that we will likely see growth in non-fossil technologies. But, particularly with world energy use on the upswing, a crash program to replace traditional fuels is neither realistic nor economically feasible. We will need all of our resources to provide for our future economic growth.

The major advantage of our present energy system - one based on fossil fuels - is quite simply that it works. It is relatively low cost. It uses low-cost and globally abundant resources. And it represents a huge capital investment in a global infrastructure. It will not be - nor should it be - discarded overnight.

So that brings us to the second approach to greenhouse gas reduction: efficiency improvement. And that too is taking place.

We now have in our sights the prospect for an automobile that achieves 80 miles per gallon, without compromising comfort, safety or price. In the fossil fuel research program I oversee, we have under development new concepts for power plants that will generate electricity at 60 percent or higher efficiencies and by using the byproduct heat, achieve thermal efficiencies in excess of 80 percent.

These are viable and excellent short-term ways to reduce carbon emissions without increasing costs - a "no regrets" approach. But improving efficiency and switching to lower carbon fuels will not be enough to solve the greenhouse gas emission problem over the long-term. They will not be enough to stabilize CO2 concentrations at an acceptable level - as defined by the 160 nations that ratified the 1992 Rio Framework Convention. For example, to stabilize CO2 concentrations at their current levels, world emissions would have to be capped at only 10 percent of their 1990 level. Absent an overnight transition to low- or no-carbon fuels, that means that the world would be forced to cut back its consumption of energy by 90 percent! Not very realistic.

Even stabilizing atmospheric CO2 concentrations at double their current level would require cutting global emissions by almost 70 percent, compared to their 1990 levels. Again, a staggering target.

That leaves the third option - the option we are here to discuss - the option of carbon sequestration. Carbon sequestration is the only option that is completely compatible with the world's current energy infrastructure. It is the only alternative we have on the horizon that doesn't necessitate massive, almost certainly disruptive changes in our energy supplies or our national economies. Without sequestration, it is unlikely that we can solve the long-term climate change problem.

I would define sequestration as the removal of greenhouse gases, especially CO2, either directly in concentrated form from the exhaust gases of combustion or other sources, or from the atmosphere itself. In other words, Part 1 of the definition is "capture." Part 2 would be "disposal" - the disposition of these gases either permanently or for geologically significant periods, or their transformation into a useable product.

The challenge is how and where this can be done most effectively and affordably.

The ocean and the deep sea floor are among the largest potential sinks for CO2. Some 40,000 gigatons of carbon dioxide are in solution in the world's oceans. The 3.5 gigatons of net emissions currently released annually worldwide is both literally and figuratively, a "drop in the bucket." But there are still many unresolved questions that only sound science can answer.

In the past decade, Japanese researchers - many of whom are attending this conference - have explored the idea of pumping CO2 directly into the ocean. Japan is currently planning to pump liquefied CO2, taken directly from coastal power plants, about 500 miles out and 6,500 feet down into the Pacific Ocean. In the United States, we have a particular interest in this concept, since it could be feasible for about 30 percent of U.S. utilities located near our coastline.

We have joined Japan, along with Norway and Canada, in a similar sequestration project to test the viability of pumping CO2 directly into the Pacific Ocean. This international collaboration will explore the technical, environmental and economic issues of ocean disposal. By the year 2000, the researchers plan to conduct a small-scale test of injecting and diffusing CO2 in the ocean at roughly 3000 feet.

We also see multiple opportunities for sequestration in geological formations. As most of you are well aware, the Norwegian oil company, Statoil, is injecting almost 1 million metric tons a year of recovered CO2 into a undersea saline reservoir in a porous sandstone formation. To date, this is the only commercial geological CO2 sequestration facility in the world.

In the future, we may be able to inject carbon dioxide into coal seams and produce natural gas from the seams as an ancillary benefit. CO2 is already injected for enhanced oil recovery.

For coal-fired utilities, CO2 sequestration in unmineable coal seams and depleted oil and gas reservoirs may be the most attractive near-term options.

In the longer term, there may be biological sequestration options. Researchers are exploring new farming techniques and bio-engineering that could lead to crops that absorb more carbon and yield more products. This past Spring, the Department of Energy announced its support of 12 other innovative sequestration projects from a competition that attracted 62 proposals. The projects are a diverse mix of concepts, ranging from CO2-absorbing algae grown on artificial reefs or encased in bioscrubbers to new chemical processes and membranes that separate CO2 from the flue gases of fossil fuel power plants and factories.

So the momentum is building. Sequestration has moved into the mainstream of scientific study. Sixteen countries and a number of private sector companies and organizations involved in the IEA Greenhouse Gas Programme have ongoing programs to explore CO2 sequestration concepts. No longer is it a research novelty.

Perhaps most importantly - and certainly most promising from the standpoint of future commercial acceptance - there are true visionaries in the business of energy who are beginning to see carbon sequestration as the core of 21^st century corporate profit centers.

That, in my opinion, tells me that we are on the right path - that sequestration has a future and that our investment today in sequestration research will pay dividends in the future.

So what are the next steps along the path? Which direction should you, the pioneers who have gathered this week at Interlaken, move in the future?

I believe there are many routes we can take. The technological possibilities are numerous and diverse, and all are worth exploring. But I believe there is only one way that we - as a community of scientists and policy makers - can achieve the goal of affordable, realistic sequestration effectively - and that is to walk down the research path together, not only as pioneers but as partners.

We in the United States have taken on many national problems by finding mechanisms that effectively combine the talents and resources of both government and industry. We carried out a $6 billion joint government-industry Clean Coal Technology Program which many said could not be done because the public and private sector would never join as cooperative partners. But they did, and as a result we now have a new generation of emission controls and power generating technologies that were only drawing board concepts a decade ago.

Similarly, in many of our nation's oil fields, government and industry have joined in partnership arrangements to test new ways to find and produce crude oil that otherwise would have been left behind and abandoned. Partnerships between government and industry can work. They have been successful in solving national problems. But we are here today at Interlaken to discuss matters of global importance - potential problems that don't stop at geographical boundaries, problems that won't be solved by national partnerships alone.

I believe we must leave Interlaken with the goal of creating a global partnership of nations - involving both government and industry - that join together in collaborative arrangements, both formal and informal, to take on the challenge of carbon sequestration. I hope that is why we are here this week - to begin planting the seeds of international collaborative efforts that can prosper in future years.

We in the United States have begun to do this through the IEA and other international organizations, and we will continue these efforts. In the budget for the Department of Energy next year, there will likely be a small growth in funding for sequestration research - not as much as we had hoped, but a start nonetheless. In the budget we are putting together for the year 2000, we hope to see an increasing commitment to sequestration R&D. We will carry out this program by offering matching funds for the best ideas that the best minds of our universities, industry and research laboratories can offer.

Our intention will be to offer the majority of those research funds on a global basis - encouraging the creation of multinational research teams that bring together the best ideas the world has to offer.

Now, especially, when many of the ideas are exploratory in nature - where the concepts are still too high-risk and unproven to be considered viable commercial ventures and proprietary concerns have yet to develop - this may be the ideal time for an international, collaborative effort. We hope that other nations see the same possibilities.

We will hear a lot of intriguing possibilities this week. Some will be well along the R&D path. Others will be at the early stages. There will likely be more good ideas than any one nation could hope to develop to fruition.

So, is it possible for a global community of nations to develop mechanisms for sharing their fundamental research plans, pooling their research funds, and conducting an internationally coordinated research effort? I think it is.

I believe that, starting at this conference, we must also make a concerted effort to effectively communicate the possibilities and benefits of carbon sequestration.

Our challenge is - and our commitment must be - to convey the potential of carbon sequestration NOT just to fellow scientists and engineers, but to those in government who are making policy decisions, to those in business and industry who must make financial decisions, and to those in the public who, ultimately, will have the greatest stake in whether those decisions are the right ones.

In my view, the potential seriousness of climate change - whether you accept or reject the notion of an imminent danger - the fact that in the future, the world could face an issue that will touch every inhabitant on this planet...that, alone, in my opinion is reason enough for the world's scientists and engineers to come together in pursuit of a common goal.

Carbon capture and sequestration, in the long run, may be one of, if not the, most viable solution available to us. It may be the answer to what arguably could be the most serious environmental challenge future generations will face. We must make every effort - as individuals, as a community of nations, and as pioneers - to find out.

Danke schn.