Good to see Chris Davies MEP, the European Parliament’s lead on carbon capture & storage, not letting the financial crisis derail investment in new green technologies. He is looking for support for 10 billion euros worth of carbon allowances to finance large-scale clean coal demonstration projects. Davies was speaking at the launch in Brussels of a new McKinsey study ,CCS: Assessing the Economics, showing that CCS has the potential to capture up to 400 million tonnes of CO2 by the mid 2020s, one-fifth of Europe’s expected CO2 emissions at that timeDavies’ initiative meets one of the main concerns in the TUC’s report on clean coal with CCS – securing the massive funding stream needed to get this technology deployed. Needing to know if this technology will work or not is shifting daily from the academic to the deadly serious. The Independent reports on the release of methane gases once trapped on the seabed beneath the melting Arctic ice. Scientists out there in the wild report methane streams bubbling to the surface. Methane is 20 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2.

Next stage for CCS is for the European Parliament itself to get behind the Davies project and release the funds needed for 10 to 12 European CCS projects. Can gases crunch? If so, we are heading for a methane one.

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