Environmentalists and carbon-emitting companies clashed over the Environmental Protection Administration’s (EPA) proposed regulations on a carbon capture and storage (CCS) site yesterday, as environmentalists criticized a proposal by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) to deregulate CCS developments that hold less than 100,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide.
The EPA yesterday held a public hearing after it announced a proposal to require all development of CCS sites to undergo an environmental review regardless of the scale of development, as leakage of stored carbon dioxide remains a risk to geological stability and underground water systems.
CCS is the process of capturing waste carbon dioxide and depositing it in a storage site, usually an underground geological formation, where stored gases cannot easily re-enter the atmosphere.
Taipower officials expressed opposition to the proposed compulsory environmental assessment, saying that the EPA should approve pilot CCS projects and projects that plan to inject less than 100,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide without environmental review as per EU regulations.
Taipower said it is time consuming to conduct geological surveys and develop storage sites, while environmental reviews would further complicate the process and discourage developers.
China Steel Corp representatives said that small-scale CCS projects would not significantly affect the environment and should thereby be exempt from environmental review.
However, Taiwan Water Resources Protection Union director Jennifer Nien (粘麗玉) said that research is yet to be done to ascertain whether the nation’s geological features are ideal for long-term carbon dioxide storage.
The government and businesses should not bulldoze any legislation relating to CCS until proper assessments are made, Nien said.
Exempting smaller operations would prompt developers to circumvent environmental review by lowering the capacity of planned sites, Nien said, adding that the EPA should uphold its policy to ensure that all CCS projects undergo environmental review.
CCS simply buries carbon dioxide instead of actually reducing carbon emissions, she said, adding that CCS should not be included in the Greenhouse Gas Reduction and Management Act (溫室氣體減量及管理法) as a carbon reduction option, which would only encourage energy intensive industries to continue using fossil fuels and evade their responsibility to reduce emissions.
Referencing an outgassing of naturally sequestered carbon dioxide in Lake Nyos in Cameroon, which killed about 1,700 people in 1986, Nien said that carbon dioxide stored artificially might cause similar disasters.
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