The Innovation for Cool Earth Forum (ICEF) series was started in 2014 under the patronage of the Prime Minister of Japan, Mr Shinzoe Abe. The conference programme is extremely comprehensive with both plenary lectures from key international speakers on topics related to GHG mitigation and concurrent sessions on topics like geothermal power, hydrogen production, smart grids etc., the conference web site giving the full programme can be found at: http://www.icef-forum.org.
I was invited to the second of these events by the organising committee to speak in a panel session on CCS. The CCs session was held on day 2 of the conference and comprised 5 speakers;
- Leon Clarke, PNNL who gave an overview of the need for CCS as emphasised in the 5th Assessment report
- Myself who gave an overview of the current global status of CCS
- Shinichi Nakao of RITE gave an overview of capture research activities in Japan
- Sally Benson, Stanford University gave an overview of the safety of geological storage
- Mike Monea, SaskPower updated the audience on the status of Boundary Dam in Canada.
The technical session was followed by a lively Q&A session with the 60 or so delegates that attended. There was much focus in the Q&A on the Japanese situation, the need for CCS in Japan and on the public perception of CCS around the world. One key issue that was raised is that the Japanese Government regards CCS as unproven but the panel stated clearly that it was now proven and safe.
There is an online discussion board provided on the ICEF web site which you can access at http://www.icef-forum.org/platform/thematic_discussion.php which also adds to the session debate.