The International CCS Knowledge Centre held its first Global CCS Symposium with a theme of “Advancing a Path Forward”, supporting the goal of the Centre to advance CCS globally. Some 160 attendees from 11 countries participated, including from China, Mexico, Indonesia, Bangladesh, South Africa, and from India by video, as well as Norway, Australia, UK, and from Asian Development Bank and World Bank.

The symposium brought together coverage of technical aspects in capture and storage, application in power and industrial sources, economics, policy aspects, climate-need aspects, CCS in the Paris Agreement, and perspectives from developing countries including much from China, and also Indonesia, Vietnam, Bangladesh and India.

There was a common recognition in the need and challenges in going from the million tonnes scale now to the gigatonne scale. Mike Marsh CEO of SaskPower gave an update on Boundary Dam CCS Project (BD3). David Greeson of NRG gave an update on the Petra Nova project. Brent Jacobs and Corwyn Bruce provided updates and learnings from BD3 operational experience, for example the use of activated carbon to stop foaming of the amine, and the benefits of testing capture systems in flexible operation load-following conditions, and differences to Petra Nova in construction materials for the absorber. Experiences from Shell’s Quest were also shared. Mona Molnvik of SINTEF gave an update on Norwegian developments, including the news that Shell and Total were joining Statoil in development of the Smeaheia storage site. ADB described their CCS technical assistance projects, which are to be extended from China and Indonesia to India, Vietnam, Kazakhstan and Bangladesh, including an interest in capture-ready regulations (for which IEAGHG has its 2007 report).

The Saskachewan Minister for Environment the Honourable Dustin Duncan spoke and described CCS as a “Saskachewan success”. Several media attended, interviewed and reported on the event.

IEAGHG was involved in moderating an ‘armchair dialog’ on “CCS: Essential Now!”, drawing upon IEA ETP 2017, IPCC and personal experiences and views of the panel.

The presentations will be made available by the Knowledge Centre. The symposium was followed by a visit to Boundary Dam, Aquistore and CCTF. Overall there was an air of positivity in the symposium, from the sharing of learnings from the large-scale operational projects with an international audience, including with some new countries. 

Image of the ADB Delegation