Australia to propose tax incentives for critical minerals
The proposed law will set up a tax incentive worth 10% of relevant processing and refining costs for 31 critical minerals.
BHP Billiton (ASX:BHP), the world’s largest mining company, is urging governments to provide more support to the industry for developing carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects.
The company’s vice president of sustainability & climate change, Fiona Wild, said BHP sees such initiatives as an effective way to reduce global emissions, meet climate targets and support millions of jobs globally.
The current challenge is to scale up CCS development at a pace that keeps the mining industry on track for “credible decarbonisation,” says BHP.
Despite key developments in the area, such as the Petra Nova project in Texas, which is the world’s biggest CCS built at a power station, Wild said more help is needed from both governments and industry to promote the technology.
“Although CCS and its component processes have successfully been demonstrated, more needs to be done to make it economically viable for wide deployment,” she said in a commentary posted Tuesday on BHP’s website.
In November, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said CCS schemes were a necessary addition to other low-carbon energy technologies meant to drive down global greenhouse gas emissions. And to meet the benchmarks outlined in the Paris climate agreement, the IEA has said CCS can’t be optional.”
While Wild agrees, she noted the current challenge is to scale up CCS development at a pace that keeps the industry on track for “credible decarbonization.”
“…Industry and government must work together to develop pilot projects, demonstration plants and ‘first of a kind’ commercial scale operations,” she wrote.
As an example, she quoted BHP’s initiatives on the matter in China, where the miner is working with Pekin University to identify policy, technical and economic barriers to CCS deployment in the country’s steel industry. She also mentioned the firm’s $1.47-billion Boundary Dam CCS project, in Canada, a joint effort with SaskPower that was the world’s first commercial-scale, post-combustion CCS project at a coal-fired generating station.
According to the IEA, global carbon emissions increased by an average of 2.3% annually between 2003 and 2013, but have since slowed to around 0.2%.
7 Comments
Art Easian
There has been no experimental support for the hypothesis that carbon dioxide is the cause of climate change. Why would the IEA advise expensive carbon capture? Maybe BHP Billiton can sell expensive CO2 to Coca Cola and help them save more polar bears from warming and extinction.
The wheels are coming off the anthropogenic global warming bandwagon as carbon dioxide rises, the pause in warming for the 21st century continues and NOAA gets caught cooking the books.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/444668/whistle-blower-scientist-exposes-shoddy-climate-science-noaa
“…Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite.”– Dwight Eisenhower, 1961
Jane
Historically there has been an increase in Carbon with hotter climate temperatures. Carbon is also added to green houses to promote growth. Is Carbon not the earths mechanism for dealing with a warmer climate?
Don L
Yes (with a lot of caveats) and over geologic time!
Diogenes60025
Carbon capture is a wasteful and unnecessary boondoggle and a political trap for fools. This is a mining website. Don’t you people know where limestone (calcite) comes from?
Climate change is a false premise for regulating or taxing carbon dioxide emissions. Nature converts CO2 to calcite (limestone). Climate change may or may not be occurring, but is is surely NOT caused by human fossil fuels use. Temperature changes cause changes in ambient CO2, with an estimated 800 year time lag.
Others have shown the likely causes of climate change, and they DO NOT include human use of fossil fuels. There is no empirical evidence that fossil fuels use affects climate. Likely and well-documented causes include sunspot cycles, earth/sun orbital changes, cosmic ray effects on clouds and tectonic plate activity. The further point here is that earth naturally recycles all carbon dioxide.
Here’s why. Fossil fuels emit only 3% of total CO2 emissions. 95% comes from rotting vegetation. All the ambient CO2 in the atmosphere is promptly converted in the oceans to calcite (limestone) and other carbonates, mostly through biological
paths. CO2 + CaO => CaCO3 (exothermic). The conversion rate increases with increasing CO2 partial pressure. A dynamic equilibrium-seeking mechanism.
99.84% of all carbon on earth is already sequestered as sediments in the lithosphere. The lithosphere is a massive hungry carbon sink that converts ambient CO2 to carbonate almost as soon as it is emitted. All living or dead organic matter (plants, animals, microbes etc. amount to only 0.00033% of the
total carbon mass on earth. Ambient CO2 is only 0.00255%.
Full implementation of the Paris Treaty is now estimated to cost $50 trillion to $100 trillion by 2030–$6,667-$13,333 per human being. Nearly two-thirds of humanity’s cumulative savings over history. And will not affect climate at all.
Rising ambient CO2 is a natural and self-limiting phenomenon.
Consider these key questions:
1) Where does limestone come from?
2) Why can abundant sea creatures with lifespans of weeks readily create calcite from CO2 dissolved in seawater? (Dissolved CO2 to carbonate sediment in weeks!) Why is the population of those creatures growing dramatically?
3) What are the reaction rates and end products of a weak acid (CO2) dissolved in a basic solution (seawater)?
4) What is the most important carbon reservoir anyway? (No, not plant material!)
5) How did earth’s atmosphere evolve from its original composition of methane, ammonia and carbon dioxide to its present one of nitrogen, oxygen and argon? (Carbon dioxide missed the cut.)
6) What is the likely consequence of the fact that the reaction CO2 + CaO => CaCO3 is exothermic?
7) Most of the fossil fuels that ever existed burned up naturally, and continue to do so. How come we’re not toast already?
Partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere drives calcification rates. More CO2, faster calcification, and sequestration in sediments. It is shown that CO2 lags temperature. Ambient CO2 is the DEPENDENT variable. Temperature changes, from other causes, is the INDEPENDENT variable that drives natural CO2 emissions. Dead flora rots faster in warm temperatures.
miner 49er
A terrific technology and we should give back to the world as it gives to us. Remember someone gave us life and somewhere along the line money has taken over. The jobs that can be saved and made with this technology is an incredible thing. There is a phenomenal amount of coal and methane gas out there and if we can use it in a clean way that is awesome! There is a price for everything and carbon tax is one of them. People complain about the tax on booze and cigarettes too but still go out and buy these products. I myself work in the mining industry and have done so for 35 years. I only hope that this technology doesn’t go the same route as the Avro Aero.
Don L
Regardless of whether CCS is viable, how is it possible for people commenting here to think climate change is not directly influenced by burning massive amounts of fossil fuel globally…? Mind-boggling!
Diogenes60025
Not massive compared with natural emissions. Rather bordering on trivial.