Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technologies form a key piece of virtually all roadmaps for global carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions reductions-many studies predict that CCS will contribute 20-50% of the necessary CO₂ emissions reductions by 2100. To assess actual progress of CCS projects towards fulfilling these expectations, the PESD Carbon Storage Project Database tracks all publicly announced CCS projects worldwide.

Through careful examination of numerous information sources, we grouped all CCS projects into three categories according to the probability of their completion: currently operating (100% likelihood), possible (estimated 50-90% likelihood), and speculative (estimated 0-50% likelihood).

We find that even under the aggressive scenario that all "possible" projects are indeed realized, this will result in about 80 Mt CO₂/yr of reductions worldwide by 2025, far short of the 350 Mt CO₂/yr of reductions that are projected as technologically feasible using CCS by 2030 in the US alone.

Looking worldwide, then, total carbon storage activity might need to be on the order of 1 billion tonnes CO₂/yr just for carbon storage to play a big role as one of a portfolio of technologies deployed so that the overall energy system cuts emissions on a path consistent with 500-550ppm. Our study shows that the actual deployment plans are on track to deliver less than 1% of what's needed.

We've then gone a step further and looked at the design of each carbon storage project in our database. We find that the vast majority of the most likely projects are associated with Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), sweetening of natural gas, and the production of synthetic natural gas (SNG). That is, the most interesting niche financially is associated with making more fossil fuels. While that investment pattern is understandable, it has huge implications for carbon storage in the power sector (which is where everyone thinks carbon capture and storage, or "CCS", is very attractive for cutting emissions) for the simple reason that only a tiny fraction of carbon storage investment plans envisions the use of CCS at scale. Our guess is that carbon storage will be developed through niche markets in EOR and SNG and then spread, perhaps, to CCS. But that pathway will be slow to unfold and suggests that visions of large scale near-term CCS will be hard to materialize without much greater investment in developing the technologies.

The second version of the PESD Carbon Storage Project Database, developed by PESD researchers Varun Rai, Ngai-Chi Chung, Mark C. Thurber, and David G. Victor, was released on 12 November 2008. The previous version was released on 30 June 2008.

America's standing in the world has been damaged by eight years of unilateralism and it must cooperate with rising powers to tackle emerging transnational threats, according to a major research project to be unveiled Thursday, Nov. 13, at a conference hosted by Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI).

The directors of "Managing Global Insecurity Project (MGI)" (MGI) from Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), New York University and the Brookings Institution will use the conference to present their "plan for action" for the next U.S. president.

"President-elect Obama should take advantage of the current financial crisis and the goodwill engendered by his election to reestablish American leadership, and use it to rebuild international order," said CISAC's Stephen J. Stedman. "Part of that is to recalibrate international institutions to reflect today's distribution of power. If you could find a way for constructive engagement between the G-7 and Russia, China, India, Brazil and South Africa-that reflects the reality of world power today-you could actually animate a lot of cooperation."

Stedman, Bruce Jones from New York University's Center on International Cooperation and Carlos Pascual from Brookings will discuss concrete actions for the incoming administration to restore American credibility, galvanize action against transnational threats ranging from global warming to nuclear proliferation and rejuvenate international institutions such as the United Nations.

"You find in American foreign policy a blanket dismissal of international institutions, especially regarding security," Stedman said. "But if you eliminate them, you don't have a prayer of recreating the kind of cooperation that exists in the U.N. There actually is a pretty good basis of cooperation on which to build."

The nonpartisan project also will be presented Nov. 20 at a high-profile event at the Brookings Institution that will feature leaders such as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Brookings President Strobe Talbott. That in turn will take place on the heels of the upcoming G-20 emergency summit to discuss measures to stave off a global recession and give a greater voice to developing nations. MGI's "plan for action" includes a series of policy papers on hot-button topics such as economic security.

"The big thing we talk about is if you institutionalize cooperation with the existing and rising powers you can hope to build a common understanding of shared long-term interests," Jones said. "If you approach issues only through the lens of the hottest crises, you will find different interests in the very short term on how [problems] are handled."

Transitions 2009

The 20-month-long project, which incorporated feedback and direction from nonpartisan U.S. and international advisory boards, dovetails closely with the theme of FSI's fourth annual conference: "Transitions 2009."

"There has rarely been a moment more fraught with danger and opportunity, as new administrations in the United States and abroad face the interlocking challenges of terrorism, nuclear proliferation, climate change, hunger, soaring food prices, pandemic disease, energy security, an assertive Russia and the grave implications of failed and failing states," FSI Director Coit D. Blacker said. "This conference will examine what we need to do to prepare our own citizens for the formidable challenges we face and America's own evolving role in the world."

Timothy Garton Ash, an Oxford professor and Hoover Institution senior fellow, will deliver the conference's keynote address, titled, "Beyond the West? New Administrations in the United States and Europe Face the Challenge of a Multi-Polar World."

Blacker, who served in the first Clinton administration; Stephen D. Krasner, who worked in the current Bush administration; medical Professor Alan M. Garber; and Stanford President Emeritus Gerhard Casper will open the conference with a reflection on the past and future and the watershed moment presented by Obama's presidency. The conference also will include breakout sessions with FSI faculty such as "Rethinking the War on Terror," led by Martha Crenshaw of CISAC; "Toward Regional Security in Northeast Asia," chaired by former Ambassador Michael J. Armacost, acting director of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center; and "Is African Society in Transition?" led by economist Roz Naylor of the Program on Food Security and the Environment.

Long-term security

For MGI project leaders Stedman, Jones and Pascual, the zeitgeist of the moment is America's relationship with the emerging powers. "The good news from an American perspective is, despite the financial crisis, despite everything else, sober leadership in China, India, Brazil and elsewhere understand, in the immediate term, there is no alternative to American leadership, as long as [it] is geared toward cooperation and not 'do as you please-ism,'" Jones said. "On the other side, the financial crisis highlights that U.S. foreign policy has to come to terms with the fact that it does not have the power to dictate outcomes. It has to build cooperation with emerging powers, with international institutions, into the front burner of American foreign policy." More broadly, international cooperation must be built on what Stedman calls the principle of "responsible sovereignty," the notion that sovereignty entails obligations and duties toward other states as well as to one's own citizens.

In addition to MGI's "plan for action," the three men have coauthored Power and Responsibility: International Order in an Era of Transnational Threats, to be published in 2009. The book criticizes both the Bush and Clinton administrations for failing to take advantage of the moment of U.S. dominance after the fall of the Soviet Union to build enduring cooperative structures. "We're in a much tougher position than we were five years ago and 10 years ago," Jones said. "There still is an opportunity, but time is getting away from us."

If revitalizing international cooperation fails, Jones said, transnational threats will gain the upper hand. "We will not be able to come to terms with climate change, transnational terrorism, spreading nuclear proliferation," he said. "U.S. national security and global security will deteriorate. [We] have a moment of opportunity to do this now."

New evidence that the climate system may be especially sensitive to the build-up of greenhouse gases and that humans are doing a poor job of controlling their effluent has animated discussions around the possibility of offsetting the human impact on climate through ‘geoengineering'. Nearly all assessments of geoengineering have concluded that the option, while ridden with flaws and unknown side effects, is intriguing because of its low cost and the ability for one or a few nations to geoengineer the planet without cooperation from others. I argue that norms to govern deployment of geoengineering systems will be needed soon. The standard instruments for establishing such norms, such as treaties, are unlikely to be effective in constraining geoengineers because the interests of key players diverge and it is relatively easy for countries to avoid inconvenient international commitments and act unilaterally. Instead, efforts to craft new norms ‘bottom up' will be more effective. Such an approach, which would change the underlying interests of key countries and thus make them more willing to adopt binding norms in the future, will require active, open research programmes and assessments of geoengineering. Meaningful research may also require actual trial deployment of geoengineering systems so that norms are informed by relevant experience and command respect through use. Standard methods for international assessment organized by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are unlikely to yield useful evaluations of geoengineering options because the most important areas for assessment lie in the improbable, harmful, and unexpected side effects of geoengineering, not the ‘consensus science' that IPCC does well. I also suggest that real-world geoengineering will be a lot more complex and expensive than currently thought because simple interventions-such as putting reflective particles in the stratosphere-will be combined with many other costlier interventions to offset nasty side effects.

PESD Director David G. Victor will be teaching "The Political Economy of Energy Policy" in the upcoming winter quarter. The class will introduce students to the major theoretical frameworks used by political scientists, sociologists, economists, and other intellectual disciplines to understand how societies design and implement public policies related to energy, and how the energy industry responds. Topics covered will include theories of the state, monopoly and regulation, public choice, organizational behavior, international agreements, and innovation.  The class will apply these theories to major current and historical issues in energy policy, such as ethanol, climate change, energy security, the role of national oil companies in the world oil market, the functioning of OPEC, and the California electricity crisis.