The IEA CCS Unit held their 7th meeting of the International CCS Regulatory Network in Paris 22-23 April. Sessions looked at country updates from the EU, the USA, Canada and Korea, and on international standards, on project experiences, on CO2 EOR, and on emission trading schemes.

Of particular interest was the updates from projects. I think these are the best ‘test’ of regulations. The Illinois Industrial CCS Project (IL-ICCS), being developed by Archer Daniels Midland, was successful in getting a 10 year post-injection site care period from the EPA (the default is 50 years). This project is of even greater importance in ‘testing’ the application of EPA Class VI regulations now that FutureGen2 is not continuing. The project hopes to start injection at the end of 2015, subject to final EPA approvals. The Shell Quest project is a model of working with the regulator as regulations are developed, and also hopes to start injection later in 2015. These projects also show that the amount of work required to apply for regulatory approval is considerable and should not be underestimated. The interactions of storage licences, storage permits, and storage leases from the Crown Estate for the UK was also described, as was progress by the CarbonNet project in Australia. The CarbonNet project has the first GHG exploration permit to be issued by the Australian Commonwealth government. A theme from all of these is the learning-by-doing of project proponents and regulators working together.

Also of interest on the GHG quantification side was the issuing of a draft CCS Quantification Protocol from Alberta for offset credits from CCS. Korea launched its own cap-and-trade based emissions trading scheme from January 2015, which potentially allows CCS activities. A good discussion was had on the regulatory issues around CO2-EOR for storage, for example the particular challenges during transition periods when oil production is still underway, and the issue in the USA over ownership of the pore space, and the complexities of carbon accounting because of the international trade in oil and oil products and differing jurisdictional GHG standards.

The European Commission provided an on the review of the CCS Directive. This will not be revised, it is regarded as not having any major issues, it allows member states flexibility, but further work will be undertaken to look at capture-ready guidance. Reform and improvement of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme for after 2020 is planned.

IEAGHG presented updates from the London Protocol (see IEAGHG Information Paper 2014-IP19) and from UNFCCC (see IEAGHG Information Paper 2014-IP26), both areas where IEAGHG is active in contributing technical information on CCS developments.
More information from the meeting will be found at http://www.iea.org/topics/ccs/.