Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
The Energy Information Agency (EIA) estimates that by 2012, China, India, and the United States will have built more than 850 coal power plants which would put more than five times as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as the Kyoto Protocol aims to reduce.
Over 550 of those plants would be built in China. Coal provides about 70 per cent of China's energy, and China builds roughly one new coal-fired power plant every week.
How then would these nations keep their commitment to fight global warming?
One of the ways that has been touted as the most promising has been carbon capture and sequestration in coal-fired plants.
Indeed costs could be prohibitive if nations strap on the Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) content to their projects as they push ahead with development.
But for the GCC countries, benefiting from an economic boom fuelled by high oil prices, no cost would be too much to usher in a future that supports clean energy.
Among the GCC countries, the UAE has signalled the commencement of a major national CO2 emission reduction programme, with the announcement of an initiative that is aimed at delivering a national CCS network.
The initiative is predicated on the fact that a fully-developed CCS network can potentially reduce the UAE's CO2 emissions by almost 40 per cent, while increasing oil production by up to 10 per cent and liberating large quantities of natural gas.
This is achieved through the separation of carbon dioxide from industrial and energy related sources and its transportation to oil reservoirs for enhanced oil recovery.
The programme falls under the umbrella of the Masdar Initiative, a UAE-based international advanced energy initiative that focuses on sustainable energy and other clean technologies.
An international request for proposals to conduct a feasibility study for carbon capture and storage was issued by the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company (ADFEC), the company executing the Masdar initiative. The study targets initially the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and is expected to later expand to cover the rest of the UAE.
The study will also identify the first project to be implemented, on the basis of technical and economic feasibility. It will provide a roadmap to develop a comprehensive CCS network in Abu Dhabi, and potentially link it with similar schemes across the region.
In the meantime, faced with an ever-rising demand for power and in the absence of effective measures to curtail consumption, rapidly developing Dubai is going for the coal option until its nuclear power plant is set up.
With no previous experience of coal-fired generation, Dubai will be starting from scratch. It will need to build the infrastructure to receive, handle and store the coal, as well as getting used to using it for power generation. However, it will still be quicker to develop. On average, it takes about four years to build a coal-fired plant, but years more to develop a nuclear plant.
Another step by Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (Dewa) to both reduce carbon emissions and increase electricity production was taken in late February, when the authority signed a memorandum of understanding with an international consortium to undertake a study into building the world's largest hydrogen-fired power station.
Under the proposal, a 2,000 megawatt facility will be built in two stages, the first coming on line in 2011 and the second in the following year. The plan calls for synthetic gas to be produced from coal in the US and shipped to Dubai for use in the station.
The $3 billion project will not produce any emissions, though it will be more expensive to construct than a conventional power station of similar output.
Bahrain has also signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Nuclear Energy Cooperation with the US. Nuclear power will be an increasingly important clean energy source throughout the world as states strive to meet growing energy needs while at the same time controlling greenhouse gas emissions.
Saudi Arabia and Norway will cooperate to get CCS - burying greenhouse gases - recognised as a way for rich countries to offset their emissions. Norway's aim is to get CCS projects included in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which gives investors in projects that cut greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries carbon credits that can be used to offset emissions elsewhere.
Saudi Arabia and the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) have supported developing CCS.
To get clean energy Kuwait will boost its refining capacity through the Clean Fuel Project for the production of environmentally-friendly petroleum products. And for the very same reasons, KPC is keen on adopting a zero flaring policy for both onshore and offshore upstream operations in the country, setting a target of one per cent of gas flaring.
Capturing and compressing CO2 requires much energy and significantly raises the running costs of CCS-equipped power plants. In addition there are added investments or capital costs. The process would increase the energy needs of a plant with CCS by about 10-40 per cent.
The costs of storage and other system costs are estimated to increase the costs of energy from a power plant with CCS by 30-60 per cent, depending on the specific circumstances.
But GCC countries should now see the long-term benefits of CCS and not the near-term investment pressures when they look at new power projects.
