Johannesburg - South Africa has the potential to become a world leader in the commercialization of carbon capture and storage
(CCS), it emerged on Friday.
Speaking at the launch of the South African Centre for Carbon Capture and Storage (SACCS) and the signing of a charter that will see the county progress its CCS research, Minister of Minerals and Energy Buyelwa Sonjica said while CCS is a relatively new technology for the mitigation of greenhouse gases and is being propelled forward in a global context, it is
essential that South Africa accesses worldwide advances and co-operates with other experts in the field.
"South Africa has a strong and world reputation when it comes to mining operations," said Sonjica, adding that the country is blessed with considerable mineral resources - holding the world's largest deposits of many key metals.
"We know how to cost effectively extract the wealth of the earth and make it available to the markets. The South African Centre for Carbon Capture and Storage's job now, is to tap that expertise and apply it to the safe geological storage of carbon dioxide," she said.
As a coal-based energy economy, South Africa is a country with
significant greenhouse gas emission per capita.
Dependent on coal for 90% of its power, South Africa is the world's 12th most emissions intensive economy, emitting about 400-million tons of carbon dioxide yearly. This equates to about 1% of total global emissions.
Just one initiative
Carbon capture has therefore been identified as a priority technology for South Africa, given the carbon intensive nature of its economy.
"We have other initiatives targeted at conserving energy and reducing our carbon foot print. The CCS project is just but one of them," said Sonjica, adding that she hoped the collective impact of these initiatives would make significant inroads into the energy economy.
According to the recent Climate Change Summit, South Africa has
committed internationally to stabilising greenhouse gas emissions by between 2020 and 2025, plateauing for ten years and then decreasing.
Carbon capture has therefore been identified as a priority technology for South Africa, given the carbon intensive nature of its economy.
CCS involves the capturing of carbon dioxide that would otherwise be emitted to the atmosphere and injecting it to be stored in deep geological formations.
Carbon dioxide is typically captured from large industrial point sources, compressed into liquid form and injected it into deep geological formations, such as saline reservoirs, coal seams, or depleted oil and gas fields.
While CCS is not the only way South Africa can reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, it is currently the only technology available to make deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions while still using fossil fuels and much of today's energy infrastructure.
CCS forms part of the mitigation measures addressed in the long term mitigation scenario (LTMS) planning of the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism.
This plan includes a measure for 5% of South Africa's greenhouse gas emissions to be mitigated by carbon capture
and storage.
"Should our storage potential prove significant, then that percentage could rise," said Sonjica.
The South African National Energy Research Institute (SANERI), the government body responsible for energy research and development, estimates that about 60%, or 249m tons, of the country's emissions are capturable and therefore potentially available for CCS.
SANERI acting chief executive Tony Surridge said South Africa was in a unique position in that it had the potential to make CCS cheaper than anywhere else.
He said while there are already 30 CCS sites worldwide, storage
potential had to be determined locally.
Surridge said the SACCS, a government-backed agency charged with the facilitation of South Africa's development of CCS, had secured R25m from the private sector for the next five years.
The centre is a private public partnership financed from local industry, government and international sources.
South Africa is already compiling a South African Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Storage Atlas, which will use existing geological information to identify potential sites for the possible future carbon storage.
The atlas is expected to be complete by 2010 and may be extended to include the region, said Sonjica.
But the country's ultimate goal is to demonstrate this technology in South Africa by means of a carbon dioxide injection experiment in 2016 and a demonstration plant by 2020.
This, said Sonjica, would give South Africa a voice on the world CCS stage.
And with the International Energy Agency describing CCS as "one of the most promising options for mitigating emissions in the longer term", South Africa would find itself at the forefront of the technology's application
- I-Net Bridge