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  According to a new study recently reported in the journal Nature, atmospheric concentrations of CO 2 will stay permanently above 400 parts per million (ppm) this year due to El Nino. The follow on bad news is that the researchers do not expect that it will likely drop below 400ppm "within our lifetimes," Commenting on the research presented ...

The 11th meeting of the IEAGHG's Monitoring Network and the 6th meeting of the Modelling Network took place in Edinburgh last week, as a combined meeting, hosted by BGS and SCCS. These meetings bring together leading experts from research and industry to discuss the latest work and developments, with around 60 participants from 11 countries at this...

  This year this annual CCUS Conference moved from its recent past location in Pittsburgh to Tysons Corner, Virginia (near Washington DC). Over three days, some 200 attendees listened to 65 presentations given in four parallel streams. There was great interest in the two presentations were made on the Occidental MRV plan which had been approve...

  The summary report of the Risk Management Network and Environmental Research Network Combined meeting held in September 2015 has now been published. This meeting was held at the UK's National Oceanography Centre (NOC), in Southampton and was attended by 62 delegates from 11 countries. The three day meeting included themes on risk assessment ...

  The US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) provides up to date data on the atmospheric concentrations of CO 2 in the atmosphere. The NOAA data set shows a steadily increasing concentration of CO 2 in the atmosphere. In June 2016 NOAA reported that in May 2016 they recorded the biggest year-over-year jump in atmospher...

  There was an excellent webinar today hosted by the Global CCS Institute on work from the UK's Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) to develop UK storage resource. The report was produced by a consortium led by Aberdeen-based consultancy Pale Blue Dot Energy working with Axis Well Technology and Costain. It follows a 12 month project commissio...

  The London Convention and Protocol promotes the protection of the marine environment by prohibiting the dumping of wastes and other matter into the sea. Under the Protocol all dumping is prohibited, with the exception of a limited number of selected substances. In 2007, an amendment entered into force which permitted CO 2 streams for geologi...

  One of the advantages of CCS as a means of CO 2 abatement is that several industrial processes, as well as fossil fuel power generation, can be captured and connected to a pipeline network. Multiple sources of CO 2 can then be transported to suitable geological reservoirs and injected to ensure secure storage. Many industrial operations, and...

IEAGHG has jsut published a new techncial review - 2016-TR3, Review of GHG Accounting Rules for CCS. The review was completed by Carbon Counts. A range of greenhouse gas (GHG) monitoring and accounting protocols and guidelines currently exist for carbon capture and storage (CCS) activities, and various activities continue in this area. This report ...

  I have read a fascinating article in Nature about the ability of trees to seed clouds. All the research I have seen to date suggests that if we act to reduce air pollution by scrubbing sulphur dioxide from power plants then we reduce the albedo effect of clouds and the earth heats up. This has in part been blamed for increasing temperatures ...

  'Unburnable carbon' refers to fossil fuel reserves that cannot be used and the resulting greenhouse gases emitted if the world has a limited 'carbon budget'. This situation leads to the question: what role does technology have in addressing these concepts and concerns related to them? The International Energy Agency (IEA) and the Intergovern...

  The launch event of this report by the Sustainable Gas Institute (SGI) was held at Imperial College London on the 17th of May. The lead author, Sara Budinis, gave a presentation summarising the work, followed by a panel discussion with experts (Luke Warren (CCSA), Professor Paul Ekins (UCL), Charlotte Wolff-Bye (Statoil)) and the audience. T...

  The 49th bi-annual IEAGHG ExCo meeting has come to a close in the beautiful Norweigen city of Bergen. Hosted by Gassnova, the meeting began on the 10th May with a visit to the Technology Centre Mongstad. This centre is the world's largest facility for testing and improving CO 2 capture. Knowledge gained will prepare the ground for CO 2 captu...

  With thanks to the Gulf Coast Carbon Center for this article The Gulf Coast Carbon Center was delighted to host the first International Workshop on Offshore Geologic CO 2 Storage. GCCC's Katherine Romanak was instrumental in organizing the workshop with IEAGHG's Tim Dixon, who is currently an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at BEG. Dixon emp...

As we all know plastics are a man-made creation which like steel and cement are the building blocks of our current society. However plastics particularly packing is used only once then discarded causing significant environmental problems. The adverse impacts of discarded plastic in the oceans is well documented. Plastic manufacture uses 6% of globa...

  The world of offshore CCS gathered together over the 19-21 April 2016 at the Bureau of Economic Geology (BEG) at The University of Texas, Austin, Texas, for a workshop on offshore geological storage of CO 2 . The workshop was organized by the Gulf Coast Carbon Centre at BEG, IEAGHG, and the South African National Energy Development Institute...

  A study recently completed for the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum (CSLF) has just been published. This review was undertaken by the CO 2 Storage team of the British Geological Survey (BGS) on behalf of UK Department of Energy and Climate Change and the Korean Clean Energy Ministry who jointly funded the work. The project was managed b...

  I was honoured to be invited to give the opening keynote at the UKCCSRC Biannual Meeting in Manchester on 13 April (talking on COP-21 and CCS). It was especially rewarding to see the UKCCSRC's Call 1 and Call 2 projects now producing results and I was sorry to only be able to attend the first day. Howard Hertzog presented a plenary talk revi...

  It seems to be well documented scientific fact that the Artic is warming much more rapidly than the global average. See: http://www.carbonbrief.org/cuts-in-europes-air-pollution-have-boosted-arctic-warming. This is a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification. The main cause of the warming is considered to be the loss of sea ice in the region....

Coming on the back of NOAA news recently of 2015 being the hottest year on record and January and February 2016 being consecutively the hottest months on record so far it is not surprising to see that scientists from the International Arctic Research Centre have reported sea ice levels are at an all-time low. Apparently sea ice cover on 24 March 20...