The charter was signed at the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum (CSLF) in McLean, Virginia.

 

The agreement sets up a policy committee that will provide direction and guidance about how countries can conduct carbon sequestration research jointly without breaching any international intellectual property laws or duplicating existing efforts.

 

The policy committee will also oversee a technical committee that would be charged with assessing the progress each member company is making in carbon sequestration. Countries involved include Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Columbia, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Norway, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the European Commission. Another nation present at the conference, South Africa, did not sign.

 

Sequestration research will look at the capture of CO2 and storing it in forests or injecting into rocks, underground oil and gas wells, unusable coal beds, saline aquifers, or other geological rock formations.

 

“DOE currently estimates that sequestration costs can run as high as $200 per ton, but is aiming to bring the cost down to approximately $10 per ton. The International Energy Agency estimates a current cost of about $50 per ton,” Energy secretary Spencer Abraham said.

 

He said the challenge was to find an affordable technique for capturing and storing CO2 emissions that was also environmentally safe.