Germany’s environment minister Svenja Schulze has said the country should seriously consider carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology to deal with CO2 emissions that are difficult to avoid and reach climate-neutrality by 2050. “We need to have this debate,” Schulze said in an interview with Frankfurter Rundschau with a view to Angela Merkel’s remarks at the Petersberg Climate Dialogue and in a newspaper interview, in which the German Chancellor put the contentious technology back on the country’s climate policy agenda.

Schulze said earlier concerns that CCS would only serve to prolong the use of coal-fired power production were no longer valid since a government-appointed commission decided to end the use of coal no later than 2038, according to Frankfurter Rundschau, quoted by cleanenergywire.com.