Committee on Climate Change

Joan MacNaughton is an influential figure in the energy and climate policy debate in a variety of UK, EU and international roles, Joan helped to put climate change at the center of energy policy, oversaw the energy agenda during the UK’s Presidency of the EU, led the energy work agreed at the G8 Gleneagles Summit, and Chaired the Governing Board of the International Energy Agency.

Joan now spearheads Alstom Power’s clean power advocacy, focused on reducing power generation CO2 emissions.

Q1/ What is your view on the balance between behaviour change vs. low-carbon technologies in meeting emissions reduction goals?

Both will be key. Behaviour in the broadest sense – such as how we travel, or how we use energy resources – will have to change radically. On its own, for example through energy  conservation, it won’t be enough. As long as energy use is positively correlated with GDP, and as long as global GDP and population are growing, we’ll also need to decarbonise energy use as well as production. That is where low carbon technologies come in.
 

Q2/ Are you optimistic that new low-carbon technologies will be developed sufficiently rapidly for dangerous climate change to be avoided?
 
I’m optimistic about the pace of technology development, less so about rapid deployment. In fact we’ve already got the technologies to decarbonise power generation. The rate of deployment though depends on policy. Governments collectively are not moving fast enough - even in the UK which has shown great leadership here.

Q3/ Should governments be technologically neutral, or should they ‘pick winners’?
 
Governments should try to be technologically neutral, as far as possible. The private sector is better at cutting its losses from disappointing technologies, and indeed at picking winners. But without government support some potentially game changing technologies won’t make it to market -or not as fast as they could. And we’ll need all of the technologies, not just those which happen to be cheapest now; and we need them for more quickly than is currently happening.

Q4/ Are there any potential technological solutions to reducing emissions that have been ignored or under-played to date?
 
I’d have to say CCS. With a more vigorous approach, treating it as a time critical programme, large scale demonstrations could already be under construction. But four years after the launch of the UK competition we haven’t seen a single award of contract. The EU NER 300 process* also looks like taking four years from enactment of the Directives to contract award. Every year’s delay is a year’s delay to starting wide scale deployment, a year’s emission reduction foregone, and will add to costs.

Q5/ Do you think the global recession helped chances of avoiding dangerous climate change (by reducing energy demand) or hindered it (by constraining investment in low-carbon options)?
 
I think the global recession has been very damaging for our efforts to tackle climate change. Only this month I was told by one European energy minister that we “can’t afford” to take action on emissions reductions ”in times of austerity”. It’s become much more difficult to get buy in for concerted action in Europe or the US; and the reduction in emissions coming from the reduction in energy demand will, I fear, be temporary and more limited in effect, than the loss of momentum to tackle climate change.

Q6/ Where do you see the most important role for CCS in the long-term: fossil fuel power generation, biomass power generation (for negative emissions) or capturing emissions from industrial processes and fuel combustion?
 
They are all important in the long term.  In the short term, I’d definitely start with fossil fuel power generation, which is the single largest source of energy related emissions, and then move as quickly as possible on industrial processes and fuel combustion. As regards biomass, the contribution will be constrained by of land use issues for the foreseeable future. New production methods might alter that, and I hope will do so because it could become really important to be able to take CO2 back out of the atmosphere.

* "NER300" is the name of a financing instrument managed jointly by the European Commission, European Investment Bank and Member States, so-called because Article 10(a) 8 of the revised Emissions Trading Directive 2009/29/EC contains the provision to set aside 300 million allowances (rights to emit one tonne of carbon dioxide) in the New Entrants’ Reserve of the European Emissions Trading Scheme for subsidising installations of innovative renewable energy technology and carbon capture and storage (CCS). The allowances will be sold on the carbon market and the money raised - which could be as much as 4.5 bn EUR if each allowance is sold for 15 EUR - will be made available to projects as they operate