World needs 100 CO2 capture projects: IEA

LONDON, ENGLAND - The world will need to have 100 large-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects by 2020, with thousands more built over the following three decades, the head of the International Energy Agency said.

"We will need 100 large scale projects by 2020, 850 by 2030 and 3,400 in 2050," Nobuo Tanaka told a CCS conference in London, adding many of the projects would have to be built in the developing world, outside the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) group of industrialized countries that the IEA advises.

"The OECD must lead in the first decade but the technology must quickly expand in the developing world where we see the vast majority of emissions growth," he told the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum attended by energy ministers from around the world.

"By 2050 our estimates suggest that 65 percent of CCS projects must be located in non-OECD countries."

The IEA estimates $56 billion of investment will be needed in CCS globally from 2010-2020, followed by $646 billion from 2021 to 2030.