Role of Risk Assessment in Regulatory Frameworks for CCS

Publication Overview

One of the key issues that need to be resolved for wide scale implementation of CO₂ capture and storage (CCS) is that of security of storage. To gain general acceptance of the technology it will be necessary to prove that CCS is a safe and environmentally acceptable option. To resolve this issue it is considered that no single activity or action will satisfactorily answer the question alone. However, a number of different activities when taken together should be able to resolve it

Publication Summary

The study is the first that IEA GHG has undertaken that has directly involved regulatory groups and CCS project implementers in a dialogue on RA needs. The issues related to and the results of this dialogue process have proved useful in a two way education exchange. As a result of the dialogue IEA GHG now feels that regulators, in particular, are better informed on the current status of RA when applied to CCS projects. Whilst RA is not a new tool, its application to CCS is new and requires considerable more development before we can be confident in the results that RA studies will produce.

The study has highlighted that there are a number of key areas that need to be addressed such as; the estimation of possible fluxes to the surface and their impact on the surface environment. In the flux case we need to correlate information from monitoring activities with geological/geochemical/hydrogeolocial modeling to allow us to gain confidence that predicted fluxes from RA’s can be justified scientifically. On the issue of surface impacts IEA GHG has recently undertaken a study to assess what is known about the impacts of CO₂ leakage on shore, which should help to begin to clarify issues related to surface impacts.

The issue of storage time frames has been raised in this study. This issue was addressed in an earlier study by IEA GHG in an attempt to resolve this issue. Clearly this is not the case and our previous work may need to be revisited to see if we can bring further clarification on this fundamental issue.

Demonstration projects will undoubtedly be a significant source of information that can be drawn upon to help develop confidence in RA results. When developing demonstration projects we need to consider the developmental needs for RA as part of the activity to ensure that we do not leave any gaps that might result in the confidence of the scientific community and the general public in the predictions of RA to be undermined.

Demonstration projects will naturally take a time to produce the required results; in the mean time we should look to natural and industrial analogues as sources of information that can be used to generate confidence in geological storage of CO₂ as a safe and environmentally acceptable mitigation option.