International Emission Trading and the Cost of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Mitigation and Sequestration

The deployment of carbon capture and sequestration (CC&S) technologies is greatly affected by the marginal cost of controlling carbon emissions (also the value of carbon, when emissions permits are traded). Both the severity and timing of emissions limitations and the degree to which emissions limitation obligations can be traded will affect the value of carbon and thereby the timing and magnitude of CC&S technology deployment. Emissions limits that are more stringent in the near term imply higher nearterm carbon values and therefore encourage the local development and deployment of CC&S technologies. Trade in emissions obligations lowers the cost of meeting any regional or global emissions limit and so affects the rate of penetration of CC&S technologies. Trade lowers the marginal value of carbon in high cost regions and raises it in low cost regions. The net impact on the penetration of CC&S technologies depends on whether their increased use in low-cost regions exceeds the reduced use in high-cost regions. In the long term, CC&S technologies must deal with the issue of permanence. It is not the removal of the carbon from the waste-gas stream that prevents emissions; it is the sequestration of that carbon. If reservoirs are not permanent, then the emissions are merely displaced in time. Sequestration options vary in their permanence from carbon