WORLD BUSINESS SUMMIT - CLIMATE CHANGE, COPENHAGEN 2009 

A KEY ELEMENT OF THE SOLUTION TO CARBON ABATEMENT

BIO-SEQUESTRATION

MBD is delighted to participate in the World Business Summit on Climate Change. We see a critical outcome of the Summit as being the matching of reduction targets and policy with viable solutions that can be implemented on a world scale.

MBD considers Bio-sequestration has the potential to offer a commercially viable solution for large scale reduction of carbon emissions to the atmosphere.

The key messages from MBD's perspective are:

1. Bio-sequestration offers a viable solution to large scale sequestration of greenhouse gases.
2. Policy /Legislation must enable real projects to be developed - not just accounting exercises which do not result in real projects delivering material reductions in greenhouse gas emission.
3. Policy /Legislation needs to link target's to real projects.
4. Policy /Legislation should not preclude potential solutions that exist or may be developed between now and 2020 or into the future.
5. The world has the opportunity to adopt a 25% reduction target and to back it up with active on ground technologies, including commercial projects based on bio-sequestration. This would ensure that knowledge increases more ambitious targets can be progressively adopted.
6. A key condition for wide scale adoption of solutions is that they be based on commercially viable processes and projects.

Kyoto and the subsequent majority of investigation and world discussion have focussed on transferring to a low carbon environment through processes that remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere such as geo-sequestration. Policies that stabilise sequestrations through oceans and forests are also of key importance.

The Kyoto Protocol was a major step forward in that it recognised that unabated greenhouse gas emission was impacting on the environment in which we live. However, there have been key elements missing in the discussion - in particular the connection between targeted reductions in greenhouse emissions (be they 5, 25 or 50%) and the commercial mechanisms used to achieve the target.

To achieve an effective low carbon future, a stronger connection needs to be made between targets and solutions. The world needs mechanisms to bridge from the current day production of useful energy to a future that treats all elements as finite and seeks to balance use of these elements in a sustainable way.

Bio-sequestration has previously been marginalised as a solution - perhaps because it necessitates the difficult task of a comprehensive reassessment of the carbon cycle. Whilst the geo-sequestration proposes to store carbon, it is far less simple to track a path from greenhouse gases to fixation in oil's, cellulous and other derivatives. Regardless of the complexity in these assessments, it is these processes that will provide commercial long term sustainable solutions and optimise the energy/resource balance.

The future is likely to involve a multitude of solutions and processes. To rely on the simple, yet unproven process of geo-sequestration and exclude other processes is to take a very narrow approach.

Man is an adaptive animal! Life and carbon in its various forms are inextricably linked. The world has accepted that oceans and forests play a critical role in acting as the "world's lungs." This needs to be extended to an acceptance which includes all the benefits that technology can provide.

The community would benefit from a clear discussion that examines the technologies and projects that are in place today or under development. There are a multitude of processes that have the potential to provide an important role in the world's physical reduction of greenhouse gases in the environment.

MBD's CO₂ to energy process provides a good example of a real commercial process that has capacity to play a significant role in the future. Despite the lack of recognition in Australia's draft legislation, Australia's largest emitters and farming groups have seen MBD's process as a commercial alternative that will significantly reduce their emissions. They have responded through action. These industries created the term risk assessment yet they have made a commitment to adopt MBD's process in order to physically sequester greenhouse gases at the site. It is hard to understand why policy and in turn legislators are several steps behind.

To enable governments across the world to include such projects and processes a clear statement needs to emerge from the Copenhagen summit.

Copenhagen needs to provide a clear and unambiguous statement. The statement must recognise all forms of sequestration or reduction in the physical greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere.

Such a statement will then allow governments to take back the lead and enable the technologies of the future to be recognised through legislation today.

The acceptance of bio-sequestration in policy and legislation will then see the delivery of projects which:

1. Abate greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and produce clean energy, fuel, feed and fertilizer;
2. Mitigate degraded soils and improve crop yields; and
3. Deliver sustainable green jobs and industries of the future.

Australia's recent Draft Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) Legislation provides an example to the world that individual nations require clear international policy in order to replicate the policy in domestic legislation.

The current draft of the legislation focuses on geo-sequestration and excludes bio-sequestration. Australia's draft legislation has stuck rigidly with the outcomes and policies of Kyoto rather than expanding the suite of solutions to cover bio-sequestration processes. As nations around the world explore similar policies and legislation Copenhagen will become a critical leap forward in enabling these countries to secure real projects and emission reductions.

The facilitation of actual planned projects is urgently required in the CPRS legislation.

The CPRS Legislation needs to change from charge / tax technologies and unproven processes of the past to legislation that delivers both a strong target and an equally strong commercial platform for achieving these targets in Australia. This approach would mesh with that of other countries as they pursue legislative solutions.

The approach, at best, offers a minimum reduction in emissions and has failed to produce projects that bridge between the objective of target reductions and commercial mechanisms to achieve these targets. The community is looking to the political sphere to provide leadership rather than issue management in relation to the environment and the future.

The potential future is entirely brighter - Australia and other countries can take the world lead and make material reductions of greenhouse gases through mitigation and abatement into critical and commercially sound projects. Governments must provide industries with a leadership and enable the full suite of solutions - none more critical than the addition of bio-sequestration -if global warming is to be effectively reversed.

It's an argument between offset technologies in relation to one element of global warming and solutions for the future which result in a more sustainable future. Clearly the world must take a broader path and seek solutions for the future.