L'Aquila, Italy, July 9, 2009 - The Government of Canada is building on its leadership role in the development of new, clean technologies to fight climate change by helping found a new global partnership to advance carbon capture and storage technologies, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced during the G-8 summit today.

“Canada is already a world leader at using cutting-edge technology to reduce emissions and fight climate change and now, through this new partnership, we are creating more opportunities to share this expertise on the world stage,” said the Prime Minister.  “Carbon capture and storage technology has tremendous promise to balance our need for energy with our need to protect the environment.”

Canada is joined by Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Norway, China and 13 other nations as founding members of the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute.  The Institute will be a global centre of expertise and help accelerate the deployment of carbon capture and storage demonstration projects worldwide.  More than 80 major companies and industry associations have also joined the Institute, which will encourage developing countries to apply carbon capture and storage technology to energy production.  The development and large-scale deployment of carbon capture and storage has been identified as a critical priority by leaders in the Major Economies Forum.

Clean energy technologies such as carbon capture and storage are an integral part of the Government of Canada’s aggressive plan to achieve an absolute reduction of 20 percent in Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.  It is estimated that Canada has the potential to store underground as much as 600 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, an amount equal to roughly three-quarters of Canada’s current annual greenhouse gas emissions.

The Government of Canada has invested $240 million in one of the world’s first full-scale commercial demonstrations of carbon capture and storage at Boundary Dam, a coal-fired electricity plant in Estevan, Saskatchewan.  Canada is also a founding partner in the International Energy Agency Weyburn–Midale CO2 Monitoring and Storage Project.  This Saskatchewan project is one of the largest international CO2 measuring, monitoring and verification projects in the world.

In total, Canada’s Economic Action Plan invests $1 billion for clean energy research and demonstration projects, including $650 million for large-scale carbon capture and storage projects.  The Government is also investing $140 million in the ecoENERGY Technology Initiative which supports industry-led efforts to advance carbon capture and storage technologies.

• Carbon capture and storage - Backgrounder