CDM, CCS, and EB, oh my

This is an incomplete post salvaged from the internet archive.

-by Sarah

This morning’s COP (still in progress as I write) began with an agenda item on the CDM (Clean Development Mechanism). Listening to the statements, I was taken back to Global Environmental Politics class- only this negotiation consists of hundreds of people, and I was given new insight into why the process is so slow.

One of the major issues of CDM is the inclusion of CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage) as a feasible project under CDM. While perusing a hard copy of the IPCC Special Report on CCS that I picked up yesterday, it seems there are, indeed, ways to capture carbon and use it in other endeavors rather than emit it into the atmosphere. However, according to the report, plants which capture carbon using the existing technology actually consume much more energy than they otherwise would. Not only does carbon capture inherently fail to address our reliance on fossil fuels (rather, it seems to be merely a band-aid so that we can continue with existing energy use rather than invest in new technology), but it actually increases our reliance on it because of the amount of energy consumed. There are also major issues with the potential for leakage and so forth- a problem we see with oil pipelines as well, unsurprisingly.

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