The report of the experts workshop was launched yesterday in conjunction with a high level round-table at the Ministerial meeting of Mission Innovation in Malmo, Sweden. This substantial report (nearly 300 pages) sets out thirty 'priority research directions' for advancing the performance and reducing the costs of CO2 capture, utilisation and stora...

The 3rd International Workshop on Offshore CCS took place on 3-4 May, organised by the Bureau of Economic Geology (BEG) in collaboration with IEAGHG and others, and hosted by the Research Council of Norway in Oslo, with support from SANEDI and CSLF. The aim of the workshop series is to facilitate sharing of knowledge and experiences among those who...

The 2018 meeting for the "US-Norway Collaboration on CCS/CCUS" was on 2 May in Oslo. For the first time it was open to observers, inviting those attending the Offshore CCS Workshop which starts the following day (which we are involved in). It was interesting to get sight of the collaborations between these two countries which both have great CCUS R...

I was invited to give a talk to a local Green Party meeting who wanted a debate on CCS. This was the Stroud Green Party, Stroud being a town in the scenic Cotswold Hills known for its number of green councillors, independent spirit and high level of environmental awareness. They titled the debate "CCS – Essential for our future or a Trojan horse fo...

 The STEMM-CCS project held its second 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 Centr...

 It has struck me when listening to astronauts that very often their concern for the earth's environment is much enhanced after their experiences. Perhaps because of their unique perspective from space looking back at this planet, I guess they see that this bright blue/green planet is a small oasis of life in the vastness of space. This was re...

News came out on 9 February that the US Budget Bill passed by congress and signed by the President into law included "FUTURE Act". This act contains an extension to the US tax credit for CCS and CCUS, known as 45Q. The existing version of 45Q provided a tax credit of $10 per tonne of CO2 for anthropogenic CO2 going to enhanced oil recovery, and $20...

 The University of Texas held their biennial conference on CCUS, UTCCS-4 on the 30-31 January. This conference combines the Texas Carbon Management Program's amine-based capture research, the Gulf Coast Carbon Center's applied research in storage, and the Center for Frontiers of Subsurface Energy Security program's more fundamental research in...

 The Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum (CSLF) meetings in Abu Dhabi, UAE, were held from 4-6 December and concluded with the 7th CSLF Ministerial Meeting. The CSLF is a government-to-government agreement on developing CCS, it started in 2003 and now has 25 member countries and the European Commission, and consists of a Technical Group, a P...

 There will be much analysis into the details coming out of COP-23, but my short summary is as follows. Progress was made in general in the details of the 'rulebook' for the Paris Agreement, but there is a lot of work still to do. As a result it is suggested there may need to be an extra UNFCCC Parties meeting before COP-24 in order to be read...

 On Saturday we reached the end of the first week of COP-23, which is meeting in Bonn from 6 to 17 November. Whilst physically in Bonn, the formal host is Fiji, the first time a small island state has presided over a COP. Fiji asked that a focus of this COP to be on oceans, and we responded in our UNFCCC Side-event on the 7th November (see ear...

Yesterday was our Side-event, co-organised with The University of Texas, Bellona and CCSA. It was well attended, with around 150 attendees, and lots of good questions. The side event started with Dr Carol Turley OBE presenting an update on ocean acidification and its significant impacts on the planet; even the NDCs pledged so far will still cause a...

 It is the 39th meeting of the London Convention and the 12th 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 r...

 The International CCS Knowledge Centre held its first Global CCS Symposium with a theme of "Advancing a Path Forward", supporting the goal of the Centre to advance CCS globally. Some 160 attendees from 11 countries participated, including from China, Mexico, Indonesia, Bangladesh, South Africa, and from India by video, as well as Norway, Aust...

 As part of the Mission Innovation CCUS workshop in Houston, we visited the Net Power project at La Porte. This is a pilot-scale demonstration of a novel direct-fired oxy-fired supercritical-CO2 gas turbine based on the Allam Cycle. In fact Rodney Allam himself was present and co-hosted the visit with Bill Brown the CEO of Net Power. The partn...

Mission Innovation (MI) is an international initiative seeking to double each government's investments in clean energy research and development over the next five years, with the goal of accelerating the pace of technology innovation to meet economic competitiveness, environmental, and energy security demands. It is estimated that the clean energy ...

​IPIECA is the global oil and gas industry association for environmental and social issues. They held a workshop on CCS on the 12th September at BP in London, bringing in a range of stakeholders to identity the key roles and actions to speed up CCS. Sessions covered costs and technical issues, policies and public issues, regional perspectives, busi...

 The US DOE held its annual Carbon Storage Review meeting in Pittsburgh 1-3 August. This is always an interesting meeting because all the CCUS R,D&D projects funded by the US DOE have to present and be reviewed, and was attended by some 250 participants. This year was even more interesting because of the sixteen CarbonSAFE integrated proje...

 There was much news coverage of the G20 meeting and the positions that the US President was likely to take. The end result was a media focus on climate change differences, noting the G20 Declaration allowed the US to state its leaving of the Paris Agreement but also emphasised the robust support by the 19 other countries for the Paris Agreeme...

​The 2nd international workshop on offshore CCS was held in Beaumont Texas, 19-20 June. This was hosted by Lamar University and the BEG, and attracted 50 attendees from 9 countries to discuss developments for offshore transport and geological storage. It build on the conclusions and recommendations from the first workshop in 2016, continued the the...