How serious is Labour over infant carbon technology?

Is carbon-capture technology a prospective energy policy for the Labour party, or is it just a brownie point Opposition leader Joseph Muscat keeps scoring against a government that refused to consider a friendly tip by John Dalli, the European Commissioner kicked upstairs by Lawrence Gonzi?

Dirty coal and carbon may bore voters silly, but the emotiveness of higher water and electricity and the political vote-winners this subject has become means energy policy is a crucial part of what the next general elections will offer.

But while a feasibility study on a carbon-capture plant by Norwegian firm Sargas is underway, elsewhere in European carbon-capture technology is enjoying mixed fortunes.

The allure for Labour is simple enough: Sargas has promised lower utility rates if it builds the €1 billion plant that will capture the carbon emissions of the Delimara power station, and export the carbon overseas for secure storage underground. Even selling the carbon on the EU's emissions trading scheme would go far in subsidising oil purchases.

But earlier two weeks ago, the Norwegian government opened the world's largest carbon capture and storage (CCS) test facility, tagged at $1 billion (€770,000). The Technology Centre Mongstad will capture up to 95% of the carbon emissions in the flue gas emitted by the burning of oil at the Mongstad refinery.

There is a catch: this is a test centre designed to examine data and track costs, and it will not be storing any of the carbon, which will be released later on. Even then, the 100,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide that will be captured are just 10% of the Mongstad emissions.

If it does go all to plan, a proper CCS plant would store millions of tonnes of globe-warming CO2 underground. The International Energy Agency reckons that as much as 3,000 plants will be needed by 2050 to recapture the emissions of a 6 degree-Celsius rise in temperature. America has 15 plants.

The biggest question mark about CCS technology is whether it can ever become a commercially viable prospect. For example, the EU's emissions trading scheme tags carbon permits at below €7 per tonne for polluters who emit more carbon than their allowable quota: too low to entice private investors to enter into the CCS market.

Going by Norway's own leaders, the prospect of CCS spreading across Europe appears small. Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg admitted that the cost of carbon capture had "unfortunately become much higher" while Oeyvind Eriksen, CEO of Aker Solutions, the engineering firm behind one of the two CCS processes employed at the Mongstad test centre, said of CSS: "The market is dead."

Elsewhere, on the Maltese government's front, talk of Sargas or CCS as a possible technology for its energy policy is certainly not on the agenda.

Resources Minister George Pullicino's great white hope in renewables is getting EU funding for a 54 megawatt floating wind-farm, which is to form the bulk that will supply the island's 10% renewable energy target for 2020. The Hexicon project, also of Scandivanian provenance, will be supplying 9% of energy demand. The Sikka l-Bajda wind farm is still at testing phase.

Indeed, Malta's update to the European Commission on its 2020 plan makes no mention of the Sargas carbon capture proposal which could actually go a much longer way in providing most of the country's energy needs.

Clearly the government's mood for carbon capture storage appears neither close to being interested, even though it gives the impression of accommodating the prospect by commissioning KPMG to do the feasibility study.

But still in its infancy, and, like Labour's criticism of Delimara's "prototype" supplied by BWSC a tad experimental, carbon capture may just be more political rhetoric than political reality for Malta.

This story first appeared in MaltaToday on Sunday, on page 18 of its print edition.