This was the first time we had organised a session focusing on what could be a critical issue in many areas of the world i.e. water consumption. The term given to the issues re water use and energy use is “the water and CCS nexus”. The concept for this session was a discussion between Charlie Gorecki of EERC and I hope this will become an expanded topic for future GHGT conferences. The Regional Carbon Sequestration Programme (RCSP) has a water working group that focuses on the issue of protecting clean water resources whilst injecting CO2 underground. Charlie Gorecki outlined the activities of this group and referred to the groups web site which has a lot of reference material on their activities which those interested in the topic should refer to: www.netl.doe.gov/research/coal/carbon-storage/wwg

IEAGHG tapped into the research resources of this group and asked EERC to undertake a study on our behalf entitled: Extraction of formation water from CO2 storage. The study looked at water extraction from saline aquifers for pressure management and then looked at what beneficial uses could be made for the extracted water. The results of the study were presented by Ryan Klapperich of EERC and the full report can be found on the link above. Jeri Sullivan followed this line and presented work the University of Wyoming was doing around the GreenGen project in China looking at water extraction and potential uses for the produced water. Andy Read from the ROAD project outlined the methods of water management used to ensure that the Maasvlakte power plant had an almost zero water requirement. Unfortunately Andy could not give us and positive news on the the ROAD project going ahead. The final paper was really novel and was given by Wouter Schakel of Utrecht University. This paper summarised modelling work that had been done on water stress in Europe and how widespread implementation of CCS would impact on that. For USC PF with CCS water stress was observed to have limited impact until 2030 but by 2050 water stress became more of an issue in many EU regions. IGCC and oxyfuel implementation were observed to have positive impacts in reducing water stress.