GHGT-17 Panel Discussion 6 – Trends in research in carbon capture, removals, transport, usage, and storage.

In the final technical panel discussion of the GHGT-17 conference, a selection of editors from the International Journal of Greenhouse Control (IJGGC) gave an overview of the journal from conception, to cross-cutting trends, life as an editor, and a run-through of the peer review process.

At the Gala dinner, later that same day, the IJGGC presented the award for the 2024 best paper, a brand-new initiative from the journal. Congratulations to Bettina P. Goertz-Allman (Norsar) and co-authors on their paper ‘Effective microseismic monitoring of the Quest CCS site, Alberta, Canada’. Further congratulations to those shortlisted, many of whom originated from GHGT-16.  We look forward to future awards being given at GHGT’s and note that although co-incidental, it was a nice touch that the paper focussed on Alberta’s Quest facility.

Joining Sam Krevor (editor-in-chief and professor at Imperial College London) at the panel discussion were associate editors: Sarah Gasda (research director at NORCE), Abigail Gonzalez Diaz (director at INEEL), and Matteo Romano (professor at the Politecnico Di Milano).

Sam began with a brief history of the IJGGC, noting its strong tie to the GHGT series with the first volume (April 2007) comprising papers published from the GHGT-8. The IPCC Special Report on CCS in 2005 identified a need for a dedicated peer-reviewed journal on carbon capture and storage leading to the conception of the IJGGC. Over its history, it has had four editors in chief: former IEAGHG general manager John Gale, Sean McCoy and Andrea Ramirez (both of whom sit on the GHGT Technical Program Committee), and now Sam.

Sam detailed the publication volumes through time, noting a peak in around 2015 and a time-lag of around 5 years from projects coming into the pipeline (with reference to the GCCSI Global Status Report) and subsequent publication volumes. There is the expectation that submission volumes and paper publications will now be on the up-tick following the sharp increase in projects since 2020.  An analysis of geographies and contributing institutions gave interesting insights into the provenance of articles, which again reflect the location of CCS activity – but with the ambition that submissions from other geographies would be welcome. The impact of these papers go beyond citations and reaches the media and inputs to the IPPC AR6 WGIII report.

The panellists were invited to speak about trends in their field: storage (Sarah Gasda), capture (Abigail Gonzalez-Diaz) and systems analysis (Matteo Romano). Each associate editor was also asked to comment on personal reflections on being an editor, what their motivations are, and what it involved. Motivations included: that it formed a discipline of reading a lot of papers, the editors rated the quality of the reviewers and how authors are treated, being an editor increased your professional network, it provides a means to encourage authors to bring out their discussion and it provides a way to serve the community.

Some notable trends in research areas include:

• Storage: a big jump in machine learning topics since 2020; decline in CO₂-EOR; rising interests related to funding incentives e.g. mineralisation.
• Capture: China, US, Japan and Poland contribute the most with a wide variety of capture technologies and application plants represented.
• CO₂ capture from power generation still has a significant share in papers, but is declining, however, papers on BECCS are increasing as are papers on economic analysis and LCA.
• The advance of AI renders non-insightful review papers next to zero.

The editors discussed the review process, the pressure to publish, why papers are rejected and the joy of finding good reviewers and also working with authors to elicit a quality paper and discussion. All the associate editors involved with the journal were credited and thanked at the end.

Future plans for the journal include a special issue celebrating and reflecting on 20 years since the Special Report of Carbon Capture and Storage, strengthening of the editorial team and maintenance and improvement of paper publishing times. With the other plans in the making, the new best paper award, as well as business as usual we wish the journal, editors, reviewers and authors well as they seek to share the latest research and development in Carbon Capture, Transport, Utilisation and Storage.