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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...

IEAGHG's 55th Executive Committee (ExCo) Meeting took place last week in Helsinki, Finland. After two days of fruitful discussions and excellent Finnish hospitality, attendees were able to visit Neste's Porvoo refinery, which is located in the Kilpilahti industrial area.  The crude oil refining capacity in Porvoo is approximately 10.5 Mt/a (eq...

CO2 emissions from the energy production sector were estimated as 42% of the global share in 2016. In order to achieve the below 2°C scenario, the emissions from the power sector should be reduced from40 to 4.7 GtCO2 by 2050. Carbon capture systems are needed within the mix of measures for decarbonisation. Pre-, oxy- and post-combustion technologie...

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...

On 19-20 March, around 50 experts from 11 countries gathered at EPRI's headquarters in Palo Alto, California, to engage in issues relating to the cost of CCS. Following the tried and trusted format of earlier CCS Cost Network Workshops, there were five plenary sessions on selected topics relating to CCS and costs, each of 90 minutes duration. These...

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 ...

On 29 November, in Edinburgh, United Kingdom, on the second day of the "Accelerating CCUS: A Global Conference to Progress CCUS" and the day following the UK-IEA International CCUS Summit, keynote addresses were given by Claire Perry, UK Minster of State for Energy and Clean Growth, and the IEA Executive Director, Fatih Birol. Minister Perry began ...

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...

Recently I wrote about the update from the International CCS Knowledge Centre during GHGT-14 on the Shand facilities and how the learnings from BD3 were applied (see https://ieaghg.org/ccs-resources/blog/learnings-from-boundary-dam-applied-to-shand-power-station). Today, the same team released the Shand CCS Feasibility Study at a press conference i...

GHGT-14 was brought to a close on Thursday 26th Oct with a final panel to discuss 'The CCS Narrative'. The panel consisted of: the chair Gabrielle Walker – Author & Consultant, Xynteo; Bill Spence – Representing OGCI; Fiona Wild – Vice President Sustainability and Climate Change at BHP; Keith Whiriskey – Bellona; Tony Wood – Grattan Institute. ...

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...

 During GHGT-14, we had several presentations from the International CCS Knowledge Centre. The attendees had the opportunity to know more about the Shand SaskPower's power station and how the learnings from BD3 are being applied in the capture and storage systems design. Brent Jacobs presented the Shand coal fired power plant integrating the p...

I participated in the BHP CCUS Partners Discussions workshop the day after GHGT-14. This brought together around 50 senior thought-leaders and experts in CCUS to brainstorm on BHP's future vision and objectives. Scene-setting talks were provided. A global update was given by Brad Page and Alex Zapantis of GCCSI. The workshop heard about a supportiv...

The close of the GHGT-14 conference, held in October in Melbourne, presented an excellent opportunity to visit the Otway test facility operated by CO2CRC.The site, which is approximately 245 km (~152 miles) from Melbourne, was visited on two consecutive days by conference delegates who were given guided tours and background briefing on CO2CRC's act...