The 3rd meeting of the ISO Technical Committee 265 on CCS has just completed, and and made progress on the long road towards standards in several areas of CCS. It was hosted by China at the China University of Petroleum, Beijing, from 23 to 25 September 2014. This ISO committee was proposed by Canada and set up in 2012 with a Canadian Chair and Canadian and Chinese Secretariat. There are 16 participating countries, 11 observer countries, and 6 Liaison organisations including IEAGHG. Its objective is to prepare standards for the design, construction, operation, environmental planning and management, risk management, quantification, monitoring and verification, and related activities in CO2 capture, transportation, and geological storage. It consists of five working groups: WG 1 Capture (lead by Japan); WG 2 Transport (lead by Germany); WG 3 Storage (lead by Canada and Japan); WG 4 Quantification and Verification (lead by China and France); and WG 5 Cross-cutting issues (lead by France and China).
WGs 1, 4 and 5 met in Beijing, WG 3 met the week before in Toronto, and WG2 met in June in Germany. Work is commencing on the development of international standards for CO2 pipelines, for geological storage (using the Canadian standard CS Z741), and on CCS Vocabulary. Work is commencing on Technical Reports on capture and on quantification and verification for GHG emissions. A new working group was proposed by the USA on CO2 EOR, to separate it out from the storage working group, with USA and Norway to lead. This was adopted at the meeting, so a new WG 6 on CO2 EOR will commence. New members are invited to all working groups. The next meeting of TC265 and working groups will be the 31 March - 3 April 2014, hosted by Germany in Berlin. IEAGHG contributes to several of the working groups and gave a presentation to update TC265 on IEAGHG activities. Public information on the work is available at http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_technical_committee?commid=648607 .