Strategic Value of Carbon Recovery and Storage Technology: Political and Administrative Dimension

Many technological economy studies promise that energy conservation, renewable, nuclear, and carbon recovery storage technologies will be major technological options to mitigate climate change. While these studies do not differentiate the technological options from economic costs, political decision making should be based on the much broader context of political and administrative feasibility. Indeed, there are always formidable difficulties in design, agreement, and implementation of global climate policy. One of the major causes of the difficulties is the abundance of low-price fossil fuel. Restricting their use is politically and administratively difficult, since such a policy means to suppress parts of society that depend on fossil fuel use, leading to strong political resistance that affects national and international policy. The intrinsic strategic value of carbon dioxide recovery and storage technology is that this allows each society to continue using fossil fuel in exchange for adopting new equipment, with compensation where appropriate. The CO 2 recovery and storage technology gives climate policy the chance to be in harmony with existing fossil fuel dependent social structures, engaging in fossil fuels rather than confining it. Political feasibility is weakened by saying “Do not burn fossil fuel, confine it†but improved by “You may burn fossil fuel, but recover and store CO 2 †.