The UK's Special Representative for Climate Change, John Ashton, proposed a new political partnership to progress global deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology in Ottawa this week. His proposal asked that Canada consider joining the 'global partnership' of nations committed to the mass deployment of carbon capture and storage by the end of the next decade.

According to The Star, Alberta has invested $2-billion in carbon sequestration but doesn't expect commercial-scale projects to get going until 2015. The federal government has put $1.2-billion toward the emerging technology since 2006 and plans to rely on it to reduce emissions from the oil and gas sector in western Canada.

'I think that for governments like yours that have already taken the plunge, as it were, I think it is pretty much a no-brainer,' Ashton said in an interview with reporters from the Star, the Globe and Mail and CanWest News Service. He went on to say that the partnership could also go some way toward addressing how developed nations can finance efforts to stop climate change in developing countries, a key question if the world hopes to reach agreement this December in Copenhagen on a new pact to replace the Kyoto protocol and see the fight to stop global warming through to 2020.

Watch: John Ashton on USA and Canada's role in climate change negotiations

John Ashton's visit comes ahead of the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum (CSLF) in London later this month, a ministerial meeting of leading international technology groups on CCS. The CSLF will be co-hosted by the UK and Norway in London, 12th-14th October.

Notes for Editors

Canada asked to join nations in pumping greenhouse gases underground, The Toronto Star 29 September 2009

Carbon sequestration leadership forum

Act on Copenhagen

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