Press Release

13.10.2010

British scientist claims CCS is the solution of climate

change
Oxford professor argued that climate change can be solved by forcing the fossil fuel
industry to implement CCS to bury their waste products.

Climate change can be solved by making all producers of carbon-based fuels accountable for the
disposal of the carbon dioxide their fuels ultimately give off as a condition of remaining in business.
This was the proposal put forward last week by one of Britain's leading young climate scientist.

Dr Myles Allen, Head of Climate Dynamics Group at the University of Oxford, and an increasingly
influential voice in the climate change debate, presented the most radical solution to keeping the
planet sustainable in a debate that took place at the Sustainable Planet forum in Lyon. For three
days, presentation and debates were attended by 27,000 people, with thousands more following
online.

According to Dr Allen, governments attempting to get millions of people to change their behaviour
through taxes and incentives were doomed to fail. Instead, the responsibility for the problem should
be taken, not by governments, but by the carbon producers themselves, in disposing of their waste
products.

As long as carbon dioxide is buried or disposed of by the fossil fuel industry the climate
change problem can be controllable

Disposing of carbon dioxide by burying it in the ground, known as carbon capture and storage
(CCS), is now regarded as essential for tackling climate change, yet the technology is in its infancy.
Britain is one of the countries leading its development, with four experimental CCS-fitted coal-fired
power stations now being planned by the Government, but it may be a decade before it is
implemented, and two of those trials could be the victim of government cuts.

Dr Allen argued that if the big oil companies and other fossil fuel producers were forced themselves
to implement CCS – or go out of business – its adaptation would be much quicker and much more
widespread, and far more efficient than the current government policy of trying to deal with carbon
emissions from millions of consumers.

Dr Allen’s proposal is based on how much carbon dioxide the atmosphere can absorb before global
warming reaches the figure of two degrees above the pre-industrial revolution level, which is
regarded as the danger level for human society. World temperatures have already risen to nearly
one degree above the pre-industrial revolution level, and this rise has been produced by all the fossil
fuels which have been burned since then, which has been estimated at about 500 billion tonnes. He
said we can afford to burn another half-trillion tonnes of carbon before the extra degree of warming
is reached. But, we need to stop using fossil fuels completely by the time we reach the trillionth
tonne.

Therefore, as long as carbon dioxide is buried the climate change problem can be controllable, and
this is the time frame the fossil fuel industry has to take care of carbon emissions. The key point is
not to start using any of the remaining four trillion tones of fossil fuels which thought to constitute
the world's reserves.

However, Dr Allen proposal was not well-received by all the attendants at the Sustainable Planet
Forum. Mme Voynet said she was not comfortable with the idea of putting climate change away
from governments and handing it over to the oil companies. She said it would be "demobilising" and
it would make millions of people feel they had no personal responsibility for the fate of the planet, if
responsibility had been handed over to industry.

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