COP25 was held in Madrid, with impressive reorganisation by the UNFCCC secretariat and Spanish hosts to relocate it from Chile at just a few weeks notice. A main ambition of this COP was agreement on international cooperative mitigation actions, including emissions trading, known as Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. This was the one area of the Par...

The CSLF Technical Group meeting was held in an attractive location associated with the famous Impressionist painters. It was hosted by EDF and Total on the Île des Impressionnistes in the river Seine, Chatou, near Paris, and dinner was held in the famous Maison Fournaise restaurant (as in Renoir's "Luncheon of the Boating Party" painting). This se...

A symposium was held in Trinidad to assist with the development of a national CCS programme there. It was organized by the University of the West Indies (UWI), the University of Trinidad and Tobago (UTT), the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas (BEG), and IEAGHG. It was hosted by the UTT at their Energy Campus near Point Lisas on ...

The Bureau of Economic Geology (BEG) at the University of Texas Austin held a research symposium on the 18 October. The theme was a favourite of the Director Scott Tinker – 'Energy, Economics and the Environment', with the Bureau operating in the intersection of these three areas. The event showcased their latest work in this intersection, drawing ...

I am very pleased to inform you that on Friday 11 October the London Protocol Parties at their annual meeting (LC41/LP14) approved a Resolution for Provisional Application of the 2009 CCS Export Amendment. This Provisional Application allows countries to agree to export and receive CO2 for offshore geological storage. This now removes the last sign...

I attended parts of the Achieving Net Zero Conference in Oxford which ran over 9-11 September 2019. It was organised by the Environmental Change Institute and Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford, and co-hosted by Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. The conference aimed to "explore the social, political, ethical, ecolog...

The Norwegian Government and the European Commission invited some 300 decision-makers to the European High Level Conference on Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) in the Oslo Opera House on 5 September 2019. Building on the growing recognition for the necessity of increased climate action and the emerging momentum for low carbon technologies in Europe...

It was very interesting and an honour to organise for NETL an international panel on value chain developments, for the morning plenary on the 29 August. It was also a challenge, given the range of possibilities in the definition of 'value chain' due to the range of industry sectors which CCS can be applied to, each with different business models, a...

The University of Calgary hosted the IEAGHG Monitoring Network and Environmental Research Network Combined meeting over 21-22 August. This proved to be one of the most popular IEAGHG network meetings, with over 80 attendees from 9 countries.The Network meeting covered: developments in sensing ; lessons from managing field projects; uncertainty in q...

It was a privilege to be invited to present to the first Pan-Commonwealth Sustainable Energy Forum, organised by the Commonwealth Secretariat in London. The Commonwealth is a voluntary association of 53 independent and equal sovereign states, which are home to 2.4 billion people and includes both advanced economies and developing countries. 31 of t...

 You are all familiar with the Keeling Curve of CO2 measurements in the atmosphere. Well when Ralph Keeling comes to town you want to meet him. Ralph is the son of Charles Keeling, who started the measurements in 1958 and who the graph is named after. Ralph continues his father's work. He is a professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanograp...

The CSLF Technical Group meeting was held in conjunction with the Midwest Geological Sequestration Consortium (MGSC) Science Conference at Champaign, Illinois, in the last week of April. Good updates on CCS projects were provided in both, with a focus on activities in the USA not surprisingly. Of particular interest (to me at least) were some updat...

The STEMM-CCS project held its third annual meeting last week. This is an EU Horizon 2020 funded project that is developing environmental monitoring to test in-situ at a controlled release of CO2 in the seabed at the Goldeneye location in the North Sea (see IEAGHG 2017-IP14). The project is coordinated by the UK's National Oceanography Centre (NOC)...

 Japan has the Presidency of the G20 this year, hosting the G20 meeting on 28-29 June in Osaka. They are interested in potentially including an agreement at G20 on CCUS. RITE organised a workshop jointly with C2ES to generate ideas and identify best practices focussed in three CCUS areas: policies; finance; and international collaboration and ...

The two US projects in the Gulf of Mexico held their first Annual Meeting in Beaumont, Texas, on 11-12 February. The GomCarb project is led by BEG at the University of Texas covering the western Gulf of Mexico, and theSECARB Offshore project is led by the Southern States Energy Board covering eastern Gulf of Mexico, both quite large consortia partn...

A CCS Technical Workshop on the theme of risk assessment of geological storage was held in Tokyo on the 16 January. It was organised by the Geological CO2 Storage Technology Research Association (a relatively new research association) with METI, NEDO and RITE.Introductions and scene-setting for CCS in Japan were provided by senior representatives o...

IEAGHG was lead organiser of the only UNFCCC Side-event at COP24 on CCS, in collaboration with the University of Texas, International CCS Knowledge Centre, Bellona and CCSA. Held on the 6th December, the event was titled "Can Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) decarbonise industry in developed and developing countries?". Being the only UNFCCC Side-ev...

COP24 is starting in Katowice, Poland. The pre-set objectives for this COP are to agree and finalise the Paris Agreement Work Programme (PAWP), also referred to as the 'Rulebook' for the Paris Agreement, these are the governance and frameworks to allow all elements to be implemented from 2020. In addition at this COP, there will be a stocktake of t...

It is the 40th meeting of the London Convention and the 13th meeting of the London Protocol this week, the global treaties that protect the marine environment. The detailed work on transboundary CCS was completed in 2012 (see IEAGHG 2013-IP26 and 2014-IP19) but outstanding is the ratification of the 2009 amendment for CO2 export which would remove ...

After GHGT-14 I had the opportunity to visit the storage area of CTSCo's proposed CCS project. The Glenhaven proposed CO2 test injection site near the town of Wandoan, approximately 400km north west of Brisbane, Queensland. The CO2 injection at Glenhaven is proposed to take place in the deep precipice sandstone formation around 1.2km underground. T...