UKCCSC News 16 December 2011

The UKCCSC Early Careers Winter School will be our first event of 2012, taking place from 10-12 January at the University of Cambridge. Successful applicants have been notified and the final programme will be available on the website soon.

UKCCSC is sponsoring a number of specialist meetings in 2012. The first of the year will take place at University of Nottingham on 21 February: Potential Environmental Effects of CO2 Leakage in the Marine and Terrestrial Environment. You can register for the event here.

Specialist meetings taking place later in 2012 include:

• Workshop on Modelling and Simulation of Coal-fired Power Generation and CCS Process - 20-21 March, University of Warwick


• Geochemical Characterisation: modelling and impacts for CO2 geological storage - May, University of Durham


• Geomechanical Aspects of CO2 Injection and Storage - date to be confirmed, University of Liverpool

And finally, the next UKCCSC Biannual Meeting will take place at University College London from 2-3 April, 2012. A draft programme will be available at the end of January.

Please keep checking the UKCCSC meetings webpage for details on events:

NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL CCS NEWS

News from Durban first:

"Carbon Capture Safeguards Agreed to at Durban Climate Talks" CleanTechnica (Dec 12)

"...laid the groundwork with a draft set of rules for the inclusion of CCS in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), bringing it into the cap and trade carbon market; opening up the possibility that investing in CCS will finally become economically viable."

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2) You might know that Canada will formally withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol. No great surprise then that Alison Redford, current Premier of Alberta, Canada "...voiced her discontent with carbon capture and storage..."

For better or worse: "...$1.6 billion for three projects is already under contract."

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3) You might also recall the alleged CO2 leakage from the Weyburn CO2-EOR scheme:

"An international research group based at the University of Regina said the Calgary company's Weyburn project is not leaking CO2 into the property of Jane and Cameron Kerr." Vancouver Sun (13 Dec)

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4) I can see why this might be controversial:

"Swedish utility Vattenfall said it would keep European Union subsidies received in connection with plans for a 1.5 billion euro ($2 billion) carbon capture and storage (CCS) pilot project [Janschwalde, Germany] that it had abandoned earlier this week." Reuters Africa (7 Dec)

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5) This sounds really bad until you realise that the paper in question (House et al., Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences, December) is about air capture:

"Carbon capture is economically impractical" Examiner (Dec 6)

"The amount of carbon captured by the present systems being tested in the United States would use more carbon (fossil fuel) based energy and produce more CO2 than the systems would remove from plant waste streams."

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6) "Ferrybridge power station [Peoples' Independent Republic of Yorkshire, UK] carbon capture plant opens", Carbon Capture Journal (3 Dec)

"The project is the first of its size to be integrated into a live power plant in the UK. It is a collaboration between SSE, Doosan Power Systems and Vattenfall."

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7) Not just CCS but good background:

"Low-carbon technology 'will not mean big bill rises'" BBC News (15 Dec)

The Committee on Climate Change "said their 'best estimate' was that green policies would add £110 to bills per household in 2020"

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The report is here

8 ) "The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) has drawn up an atlas describing potential subsurface storage locations for carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Norwegian North Sea" Offshore (Dec 14)

"...total storage capacity of around 70 billion metric tons (77 billion tons) of CO2"

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9) "The Midwest Geological Sequestration Consortium (MGSC) has embarked on the first million-tonne demonstration of carbon sequestration in the US" TG Daily (Nov 28)

"The CO2 will be stored permanently in the Mt Simon Sandstone, more than a mile beneath the Illinois surface at Decatur."

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10) "CCS will increase some air pollutants, study finds" GreenWise (18 Nov)

"...sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions overall are likely to decrease because when CO2 is captured so is SO2. However, particulate matter (PM) and nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions are expected to increase..."

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The report is here