CSD-15 Report, May 2007 (Frank Corcoran, An Taisce)

CSD-15 was the policy session for energy, industrial development, climate change and air pollution/atmosphere. CSD-14, the review year, had failed to analyse the costs of nuclear energy. The chair of CSD-15 was from Quatar, and at one stage referred to gas as a renewable energy. The EU was not happy with the Chairman’s summary, to such an extent that they refused to sign it. Of more interest were the side-events. One of them dealt with hydrogen fuel cells, with contributors from Iceland and China. The technology is still in its infancy. It seems to make some sense for the Icelanders as they can use geothermal energy for the conversion. If fossil fuels were used for the conversion, it would make no sense.  Another interesting side-event involving the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was on carbon capture and storage. This involves injecting carbon dioxide into underground caverns. It appears that oil and gas companies inject fossil fuels into the caverns anyway in order to extract further fuel, so carbon capture and storage (CCS) can be used by them as an alternative to injecting oil or gas. (It would appear that CCS could be a necessary bridging technology since there is already so much GHGs in the atmosphere. It would be an abuse of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) or Joint Implementation to allow the oil companies get credits for CCS. It would be more appropriate to insist upon it as best available technology for continuance of, for example, coal-burning power stations under Integrated Pollution, Prevention and Control licencing.

The learning centre had a detailed workshop on the criteria for using CDM, and also on using Strategic Environmental Assessment as a tool for formulating policy.

The small island developing states generally complained about the lack of urgency in dealing with climate change issues, as they are already suffering the effects of the carbon economy through the salination of their fresh-water supplies due to increased storm-flooding events, and also their difficulty in getting insurance and thus investment for their tourist industries.

Overall the chair of the session was not impressive, and some disquiet was expressed with the election of Zimbabwe to chair the following year, CSD-16, because of their poor record with regard to human rights.