4th Monitoring Network Meeting

Publication Overview

This is the 4th meeting of the IEA Greenhouse Gas R&D Programme (IEA GHG) Monitoring Network. Since the inception of the Monitoring Network a significant amount of work has been done in this field. There are now a great number of very elaborate CCS demonstration projects occurring worldwide with each one developing and testing new monitoring techniques. While this is happening there is also a great drive from many Governments to put in place the regulations needed to properly licence and supervise CCS activities. This meeting hoped to review where we are with both aspects of CCS and identify what questions still need to be answered.

Publication Summary

The main outcomes of the workshop were: 1. An analysis of CCS monitoring and how it was dealt with in regulation. Regulation is being developed in parallel in a number of regions around the world including the US, Canada, Europe and Australia. Although regional regulation developments are not completely transferable lessons can be learnt from other regions processes which can aid development elsewhere. It was demonstrated that there are parallels that can be drawn between the acid gas injection regulation and CCS regulation however the scale of acid gas projects is significantly smaller than what is needed for CCS which reduces the applicability. It was concluded that although there is a lot of good work going on there are still some big regulatory issues to be solved, possibly the biggest and most contentious of which is when and how to hand over of the site to the national authority will occur. 2. A review and update of what is happening at several CCS projects around the world focusing on the different monitoring techniques that has been looked at. It was encouraging seeing the number of projects existing and planned and to see the wealth of monitoring techniques are being developed, tested, and applied. As more projects are started and as current projects progress the availability of historic data will allow us to start to build monitoring standards and best practices which will improve our confidence in the technology and processes of CCS.