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​ Over recent decades, it has become apparent that there is no one single technological solution to solve the problem of reducing anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions; a portfolio of low-carbon energy technologies needs to be deployed in parallel. Most climate scenarios targeting 2°C or well below 2°C confirm that carbon capture and storage (CCS)...

It seems the ROAD project in the Netherlands has come to the end of its road. It is a shame that any CCS project does not proceed and particularly one in Europe, but ROAD has had the feeling of a dead man walking for a long time now. Its latest restructuring meant it only had a small offshore injection lifetime of some 3 years. When I first heard t...

Christine Figueres, who must be given great credit for delivering the Paris Agreement has launched a new initiative – Mission 2020. Mission 2020 is not a new NASA moon shot, but is a new initiative to bring "new urgency" to the "global climate conversation". Inherent in Mission 2020 is a call to begin "rapidly declining" global greenhouse gas emiss...

​ 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 th...

The 12th Monitoring Network meeting concluded on Thursday 15 June after three days of the latest updates on monitoring technology developments and applications, healthy discussions, a group exercise, and a field trip to the MRCSP project. Many thanks to Battelle and Core Energy for hosting the meeting. It was so clear how monitoring has advanced an...

I attended the TCCS-9 conference by NCCS – International CCS Research Centre under auspices of NTNU and SINTEF. This conference takes place every two years since 2003 and run for two days in Trondheim. A total of 115 presentations and 10 keynotes were delivered, and topics covered carbon capture, transport, storage and utilization. Cross-cutting is...

Following our 51st Executive Committee meeting of IEAGHG members in Edmonton, Alberta, Shell invited attendees to visit the Shell Canada Quest CCS Project. This was a great opportunity to visit this large-scale CCS demonstration plant now in operation, and, with the SaskPower's Boundary Dam 3 CCS project, one of two major CCS projects located in Ca...

​ I attended a workshop by the Climate Technology Centre and Network (CTCN) at their headquarters in Copenhagen 22-23 May. CTCN was established as the operational arm of the UNFCCC's 'Technology Mechanism' and has been given increased emphasis by the Paris Agreement. IEAGHG was one of the earlier members of the CTCN's Network and have undertaken a ...

​ Last week I was fortunate enough to be able to attend CO 2 GeoNet's Forum, this year with the encouraging focus of 'Driving CCS towards Implementation'. CO 2 GeoNet is a European Network body that currently comprises 26 research institutes from 19 European countries, and brings together over 300 researchers with the multidisciplinary expertise ne...

  The 51st bi-annual IEAGHG ExCo meeting has come to a close in the exciting Canadian city of Edmonton. The two day IEAGHG Executive Committee meeting began on Tuesday 9th May and was held in the wonderful Westin hotel, Edmonton. This regular meeting is held twice yearly, at different locations across the world each time, and gives IEAGHG an o...

I went to Portland Harbour to see the results of the harbour trials of the UK Energy Technologies Institute funded marine Monitoring Measurement and Verification (MMV) system which has been developed for CO 2 storage site surveillance. This has a strong emphasis on the utilisation of AUVs (autonomous underwater vehicles – now famous from "Boaty McB...

The STEMM-CCS project held its first annual meeting last week. This is an EU Horizon 2020 funded project that will develop and test environmental monitoring at a controlled release of CO 2 in the North Sea. The project is coordinated by The UK's National Oceanography Centre, with a consortium of partners representing the leading marine science orga...

​ Globally, the pulp and paper (P&P) industry is the fifth largest industrial source of CO 2 emissions. Recently, the Paris Agreement has highlighted the target of achieving below 1.5oC temperature rise. In order to achieve this goal, bio-CCS has an important role to play to achieve this target. In a pulp mill, the CO 2 emissions arise mainly f...

  It is pleasing to see that Ladybird Books (which publishes mass-market children's books) has published a title on Climate Change which has been co-authored by HRH the Prince of Wales. The book, Climate Change, provides a short-format guide to the key scientific facts central to climate change. It explains the history, dangers and challenges ...

​ CO 2 capture from natural gas (NG) can be done by several technologies, e.g. solvent scrubbing, membranes, adsorption or cryogenic processes. The future demand in NG might trigger development of NG fields with high CO 2 partial pressure, for which pressure swing adsorption (PSA) processes could be more suitable than the other options. Besides, PS...

​ Overall good progress is being made with the experience gained in both monitoring and modelling from demonstration and pilot projects. There is real progress in streamlining MMV at projects and reducing the costs of monitoring. Several sites have now demonstrated conformance of a modelling-monitoring loop, leading to an improvement in the underst...

​ The Early Career Researcher Winter School held at the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training took place last week and with thanks to the UKCCSRC I was able to attend. It was a busy week with 7 keynote speakers covering topics including geological storage, the current status of CCS both internationally and in the UK, the economics and financing of pro...

The 7th Korea CCUS conference was held on Jeju island on 8-10th February. This annual conference brings together all the CCUS R&D in Korea. This is a respectably-sized conference, a total number of around 300 attended over the three days to hear presentations (in English) in three parallel streams: capture; storage; and CO 2 conversion; plus so...

  The effectiveness of CCS as a global solution to carbon emission abatement will depend on widespread deployment in both established industrialised and developing economies. One of the key stages for any country is the identification of a national CO 2 storage resource. To help understand the challenges faced by different countries that have ...

​ Review of CO 2 storage in basalts – new technical review from IEAGHG on the potential of using basalts and other magnesium rich rocks to store CO 2 . Conventional CO 2 storage relies on injection into a reservoir in sedimentary rock which has an impermeable caprock. It is also possible to trap CO 2 in igneous rock formations with high magnesium, ...