It is estimated that CCS could be used to achieve between 15% and 55% of the carbon emission reductions necessary to avoid dangerous levels of climate change [IPCC 2005]. To achieve this potential would require large-scale, worldwide deployment of CCS, capturing and storing billions of tonnes of CO2 per year. Large-scale CCS deployment will require the creation of a regime to manage risks and supporting policies to facilitate technology investment. Within this framework, regulatory, legal, and public perception considerations emerge as crucial factors that could either accelerate or stymie CCS deployment.
In 2006 IRGC decided to address the risk governance of CCS as an emerging technology that both offers potentially enormous benefits for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and presents significant challenges to government, industry and society at large. IRGC is extremely thankful to Professor Granger Morgan (Chair Professor and Head of the Engineering and Public Policy Department, Carnegie Mellon University, as well as Chairman of IRGC’s Scientific and Technical Council) and also to Professor Elizabeth Wilson (Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota), for having led the project on CCS.
The project’s primary objective was to explore the key elements of what could become an agreed international regulatory framework which would support the development and, later, commercial scale-up of CCS. This objective was based upon the premise that the benefits of introducing CCS on a commercial scale would only be realised with knowledge of the regulatory regime that will prevail and some certainty that the development and operation of the storage sites could realise economic rents.