In terms of overall outcomes, it was disappointing that the main achievement of this COP was to avoid backsliding on the Glasgow agreements, which means it did not really progress at all in most areas including mitigation. The cover decision, called the "Sharm El-Sheikk Implementation Plan" basically just repeats Glasgow's agreements on aiming to k...

This is meant to be themed as the 'Implementation' COP, following the Glasgow 'ambition' COP and the Paris 'Agreements' COP. It cannot be sensed at half-way whether this theme will be achieved. However this COP is also being called the 'African COP', and it is certainly achieving that, through the attendance by many from this continent, and the man...

UN Secretary-General António Guterres opened the conference with strong words, including the warnings "Cooperate or perish", "failure to deliver on climate is a collective suicide pact", and that the world is "on the highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator". One anticipation towards this COP was around whether countries would...

This new acronym represented the combined annual Ministerial meetings of both the Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM13) and Mission Innovation (MI-7) and took place from the 21 to 23 September. Over 5000 people attended in-person from around 32 countries. There was a very busy side-event programme with nineteen parallel events at any one time, totalling...

The first meeting of the newly-appointed Supervisory Body for Article 6.4 was just held, over 4 days from the 25th to the 28th July. This is a very important part of the Paris Agreement, as it will create a new mechanism for international cooperation based on projects and carbon credits. To quote the UNFCCC, "The Article 6.4 Mechanism is designed t...

The CSLF delegates meeting in Bergen got the pleasure of a site visit to the Northern Lights Receiving Terminal at Oygarden. This place will go down in CCS history as the first of its kind in the world, being able to receive and store CO2 from anywhere in the world. It was impressive to see the progress made as it is now in construction, compared w...

 Arthur Lee, Chevron Fellow and Principal Advisor gives an overview of the key accomplishments of SB56 in Bonn, Germany. The road to COP27 Sharm El Sheik ran through the SB56 sessions at Bonn, the seat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It was a winding road with some issues that saw paths forward; some issu...

The 5th international workshop was held in New Orleans on 19-20th May, a very appropriate location given the growing interest in and vast potential for offshore storage in the Gulf of Mexico. With 50 attendees in-person and 120 virtually, there was a good mix of industry, researchers and regulators. In particular there was very good attendance by U...

The IPCC Working Group III issued its long-awaited report with a media event which had the poignant title above. Of the IPCC's trilogy of reports, this is the one that focusses on how to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The bad news is that in 2018 GHG emissions were higher than any time in human history. The slightly better news is that the ...

Our colleagues from the IEA produce extremely important information on CO2 emissions from the energy sector, and their latest update is very sobering. For all the massive behaviour change we saw due to COVID, CO2 emissions fell by only 5.2% in 2020, and then rebounded by 6% in 2021 to their highest level ever, to 36.3 Gt. This increase was due to e...

The University of Texas at Austin held its 6th conference on carbon capture and storage from 25th to 27th January, in a fully virtual format. This conference combined the research and other activities from the Gulf Coast Carbon Centre, the Texas Carbon Management Programme, the UT Energy Institute, and the Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Eng...

Glasgow Climate Pact  In the late hours of Saturday the 13th November the 197 countries at COP26 agreed on a new agreement to build upon the Paris Agreement, called the Glasgow Climate Pact. In this package of decisions there will be much detailed analysis by many to come, I provide a brief summary from my perspective here. From our mitigation...

There were significant side-events on CCS in the second week. The first was organised by the Global CCS Institute, on CCS in the Green Transition. On the panel was Guloren Turan of the Institute, Professor Jim Skea, IPCC Co-chair of WGIII, Ruth Herbert of CCSA, Jonas Helseth of Bellona, and myself. Guloren presented the Institute's recent Global St...

On Friday inside COP26 the US DOE used their pavilion (with the impressive NASA Hyperwall) to launch two new initiatives on carbon dioxide removal (CDR). Secretary Granholm announced a new Energy Earthshot goal on CDR. The objective is to stimulate removal and durable storage of gigatons of CO2 for less than $100/t this decade. This is the US ...

The "Net-Zero World" initiative was launched at COP26 by US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm and US Special Envoy John Kerry. This new initiative is intended to accelerate global energy system decarbonisation. It will support partner countries to achieve net zero in their energy systems. It will develop technical roadmaps and then fund technic...

Scotland welcomed the countries of the world with windy but dry weather. The previous day, a severe storm in southern England had disrupted travel to Glasgow for many delegates, with many trees down and power outages, and reminding them of the impacts of more severe weather events due to climate change. COP26 started with the World Leaders' Summit....

The London Convention and the London Protocol are the global marine treaties that protect the marine environment. We previously reported on the CCS amendments and the recent 2019 Resolution to allow export of CO2 (detailed in IEAGHG report 2020-TR/02). For the annual meeting of the Parties in 2021, LC43, the CCS agenda item and the Marine Geoengine...

I don't normally read the Sydney Morning Herald, but a connection on social media drew to my attention to an interesting article in August this year on the history of BECCS (bioenergy with carbon capture and storage).This article attributes the origins of combining bioenergy with CCS to Dr Kenneth Möllersten of Sweden and consequently interviewed h...

Nigeria is a large and significant country in Africa, with some 20% of Africa's population and an economy to match, and a significant oil and gas sector. It recently issued its updated NDC for COP26 where it pledges to reduce emissions by 20% by 2030 and by 47% by 2030 conditional on international support, which would then be consistent with a 1.5C...

The Norwegian-based CCS conference TCCS-11 was forced to go fully virtual this year because of COVID, as had our own GHGT-15. However a plus was that the Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg was able to give the opening welcome address. She is a very impressive person, leading in the UN on sustainable development goals advocacy and also on educati...