Masdar’s Green Theme (and Thumb) Continues to Fade to (Carbon) Black
The Government of Abu Dhabi, along with it’s most visible sovereign wealth fund, has promoted an environmental agenda for the last five years, promising a Zero Emissions City, a solar PV industry, numerous carbon capture projects, and a 7% renewable energy target for 2020. Over the last two years, the solar industry plan has been shelved, and a variety of CCS projects have been delayed ore redesigned for later retrofit (a much more expensive program). CCS has been highlighted as a key technology in the region, potentially replacing natural gas injection in the production of crude, and freeing the gas for domestic power use – probably the best economic (lowest cost) way to use/dispose of CO2. So, as the Abu Dhabi cleantech ideal postpones any CCS costs, it turns out that Qatar built carbon capture into its entire LNG infrastructure over the last decade (admittedly, it’s easier for natural gas than other, higher emission processes). In addition, long term energy/climate forecasts assume that CCS will be one of the seven key ‘wedges’ in emissions reduction over the next forty years, with commercialization in the next decade. Cost estimates based on pilots so far remain multiples above any tolerable ‘cost of carbon.’