The Alstom Power president will call upon governments at the World Business Summit in Denmark this month to “tackle climate change” and decarbonise power generation.
The World Business Summit on Climate Change will take place from May 24th to 26th, 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark, where global business leaders are taking part in an interactive debate on “Shaping the new green economy”.
The Summit’s one objective is to list solutions and needs to turn climate change challenges into opportunities.
“Governments are the only ones who can ensure the legal framework the private sector needs to do what it is able to do best — innovate in a cost-effective way to ensure decarbonised power,” said Alstom Power president, Philippe Joubert.
In order to help limit CO2 emissions and temperature rise by 2 degrees Celsius by 2100 and develop a business model to further promote low-carbon technologies, the Power sector needs the leadership from governments to provide clear targets and incentives, says Joubert.
“In the Power sector, investments are always heavy and long-term,” he said.
“Therefore, governments must act to provide:
“- Long term robust framework for carbon pricing and intellectual property protection. And one that is global, in order to drive the market for clean technologies.
“- Immediately available public funding, to allow the start-up and the deployment of clean technology innovation.”
From the supply side, Alstom Power is working on emission levels using 3 main levers:
•Technology mix
•Production Efficiency (on new and installed base)
•Carbon Capture and Storage
Alstom Power spent several hundreds of millions of euros on R&D last year, with a major focus on additional investment in CO2 capture solutions, on these 3 fronts.
“We propose the complete portfolio of technologies to make power clean today, and all of it will be needed, unless we accept a major setback in demand levels, which seems pretty unlikely” said Joubert.
“We believe that continuous innovation holds the key to a long-term solution to the environmental and economic challenges, through a range of technologies enabling more efficient and more sustainable power generation”.