On 9 November, Ottawa's Globe and Mail reported that companies engaged in extracting Canada's oil sands were calling for state aid to help them adopt carbon-capture-and-storage (CCS) technology.

A report, Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage: A Canadian Clean Energy Opportunity, released by the Integrated CO2 Network (ICO2N), which represents Canada's major oil companies and coal-based utilities, makes its claim on environmental and economic grounds.

The Network argues that, given low projections for the price of carbon offsets until 2020, more direct financial incentives will be needed to stimulate investment in CCS. They estimate that the technology could achieve 25% of Canada's 2020 CO2 reductions, at a cost similar to wind power and ethanol, both of which already receive government support.

Billions of dollars have already been invested in Alberta's oil sands. The process of turning the sands into synthetic crude oil is relatively emission-intensive, which would be costly to mitigate under a future cap-and-trade scheme. Given carbon-pricing, the industry argues that CCS is the only technological option that could make production viable.

According to The Globe and Mail, Ottawa and Alberta have already committed C$ 1.4 billion to fund CCS projects. The Network has not named a sum it would require over and above this, maintaining that it depends on the carbon price Ottawa imposes and the cost of the CCS itself.

The previous week, on 6 November, the World Coal Institute published a report with much the same message, Securing the Future: Financing Carbon Capture & Storage in a Post-2012 World.

The paper argues that there is "an urgent need to fund demonstration projects and that funding needs to come from both governments as well as a robust carbon market". Among its list of potential financing options, it mentions revenues from the auctioning of CO2 permits, feebates (a portmanteau of ‘fee' and ‘rebate', in which consumers pay a fee for environmentally damaging goods, that funds a rebate for environmentally friendly alternatives), feed-in tariffs, loan guarantees and the inclusion of CCS in the Clean Development Mechanism.

Subsequently, on 10 November the Times Online reported on the UK government's plans to fund four CCS demonstration plants using a new levy on retail electricity sales that will last 15 years and cost around £17 per household per year, raising a total of £9.5 billion. The new plants will only need to capture 25% of their emitted carbon in the first phase of the program, although 100% capture will be required by 2020.

The U.K. government admits that CCS may not prove to be commercially viable, and that they will need to monitor its prospects as the program progresses. They admit, too, that, depending on the price of carbon, the scheme might need to be extended at the end of the initial 15-year period.