A capture-ready power plant is one that has been designed and built for subsequent retrofitting with CCS technology. Coal-fired power plants emit a lot of carbon. Retrofitting them with CCS would make it possible to nearly eliminate these emissions for much of their long service lives. Building new plants capture ready makes energy-policy sense because Europe urgently needs to replace aging generating capacity now even though CCS technology won't be commercially viable until some time in the future.

When we decide whether to invest in a new power plant, we consider how its operating environment may change over its 40-year service life. Emissions trading is already serving as a mechanism to cap and gradually reduce Europe's carbon emissions, resulting in higher carbon prices. This could make CCS commercially viable during the service lives of our new coal-fired power plants. It therefore makes business sense for us to build them capture ready so that we can respond when CCS becomes economic.

Because capture ready hasn't been officially defined, we've drawn on the expertise of TÜV Nord, a leading independent testing and inspection firm. After carefully studying our plans, TÜV Nord certified our 50plus new-build projects in Wilhelmshaven and Antwerp as capture ready, meaning that they have all necessary features for future retrofitting. Other E.ON new-build projects will soon be submitted to TÜV Nord for certification.

It's been proposed that increasing renewables capacity and improving energy efficiency could halve global carbon emissions to about 11.5 billion metric tons (bmt) per year by 2050. Even if this calculation is correct, that's still a lot of man-made carbon entering the atmosphere. About 4.2 bmt of it would come from fossil-fuel-fired power plants and about 1.5 bmt from industrial facilities. CCS would make it possible to prevent these emissions. Ultimately, it will take more than a few individual technologies to tackle climate change. It will take a broad portfolio of measures that together make an effective, sustained contribution to protecting the earth's climate.

It takes energy to capture carbon. With current technology, a CCS-equipped power plant consumes about 30 percent more fuel. Intensive R&D is under way to reduce this energy drain by perfecting the capture process and utilizing new materials and technologies. This improvement potential must be realized if we are to develop a new generation of climate-friendly power plants. Our objective is for CCS-equipped coal-fired power plants to have a thermal efficiency of more than 40 percent. It's important to remember that the additional energy currently required to capture carbon isn't really going to waste. It's an investment in making CCS a viable climate-protection option for the future. Moreover, many other climate-protection options are also energy intensive. For decades to come, coal will remain one of the world's most important fuels. That's a good reason to systematically develop and implement CCS as part of a global climate-protection strategy.

Research is necessary to study, under different geological conditions, the process of storing the significant volume of carbon produced globally. Currently, numerous R&D projects are under way to examine the potential storage capacity of individual countries and of larger regions. E.ON is closely involved. These projects focus on developing ways to monitor the storage process, to ensure that storage facilities remain permanently leakproof, and to address other technical issues. Large-scale underground carbon storage has been tested for years, particularly in Norway and the United States. In Norway's Sleipner project, one million metric tons of CO₂ annually have been piped into an offshore aquifer without any perceptible leaks.

Because geological conditions vary, research data from one storage site have limited applicability to other storage sites. In 2005, the International Panel on Climate Change estimated that storage facilities are likely to be 99 percent leakproof over a 1,000-year span. This means that such facilities would sequester 99 percent of the CO₂ that otherwise would've been released into the atmosphere. Moreover, CO₂ isn't flammable and is only toxic in very high concentration, so leakage from a storage facility (which would be slow and gradual) wouldn't pose an immediate danger to people or the environment. The energy industry has extensive experience safely transporting oil and natural gas through pipeline networks. Some of these same networks could be used to transport CO₂.

There are naturally occurring underground CO₂ reservoirs from which CO₂ escapes continually and increases the CO₂ concentration in the immediate vicinity. CO₂ only poses a danger hen it's present in such large quantities that it significantly reduces the oxygen content of the ambient air. That's why CO₂ can only be stored in geological formations that have an impermeable upper layer that provides a high degree of certainty that no leakages will occur.

Developing a new technology costs money, as do all climate-protection measures on both the generation side (such as developing renewables) and the consumption side (such as deploying energy-efficient engines and machinery).

Tackling climate change is an ambitious undertaking. To achieve it in a way that makes environmental and economic sense, we need to pursue all available options and to support and develop these options in parallel. By rejecting one option prematurely, we risk reducing the effectiveness - and ultimately the success - of global climate protection. Developing CCS, improving energy efficiency, expanding renewables capacity, and (where viable and sensible) using nuclear energy are complementary, not competing, options. Investments to develop CCS represent a necessary, additional measure to promote climate protection.

It's realistic to assume that coal will be used until reserves are exhausted. Even if Germany and Europe stop using coal, some countries and regions won't. It's therefore imperative to develop and implement CCS.