IEAGHG Risk Management and Environmental Research Combined Meeting

(Organised by NOC, Southampton, and IEAGHG with sponsorship from the UKCCSRC).

This combined Risk Management and Environmental Research Networks meeting builds from previous workshops held in Trondheim, Norway, in June 2013 and in Canberra, Australia in August of the same year.  The theme for this meeting will be the challenges presented by CO₂ storage in a marine environment, although terrestrial research will also be covered.  Risk assessment is an essential aspect of CO₂ capture and storage (CCS) to gain public acceptance and to ensure that the public and regulators have confidence in the predictions made by risk assessments.  It is also important to review potential Environmental Impacts of CO₂ Storage particularly in prospective offshore areas such as the North Sea, the continental shelf of Australia and Japan.  This meeting will discuss recent environmental research conducted in Europe, the USA, Japan and Australia, and the implications for the safe and secure storage of CO₂, as well as different approaches to risk assessment and risk management.

Agenda

The agenda for the meeting includes:

1. Risk Management updates on carbon storage projects in the UK, Japan, Australia and the USA
2. Qualitative and semi quantitative risk assessment methodologies
3. Mitigation strategies
4. Risk Communication
5. The impact of CO₂ in the ocean: what is the magnitude of the impact and how would marine ecosystems respond
6. Understanding natural variability and CO₂ impacts: how can natural variability be distinguished from induced anomalies in marine environments?
7. The impact of CO₂ in the terrestrial environment: magnitude of impacts and baseline
8. Ground water impacts – how significant are the risks from brine and CO₂ and can leakage be detected?
9. Environmental impacts related to the transport of CO₂
10. Environment Impact Assessments from leading CO₂ storage projects
11. Fluid production and release into the marine environment: management, issues and impacts
12. Overburden Features: what do these represent and how do they affect risk
13. International Risk Management activities & initiatives – offshore environmental research
14. Conclusions, gaps and recommendations

Field Trip

Friday 2nd October – The meeting will be followed by a guided field trip to Dorset’s Jurassic Coast to view formations that are comparable to North Sea reservoirs with CO₂ storage potential.

See the IEAGHG website for more details and registration: https://www.ieaghg.org/networks/risk-assessment-network

*NB You must be a member of the IAEGHG Risk Management Network to access the meeting webpage – if you are not already a member, please follow instructions on the IEAGHG website to register (and note it can take a couple of days for membership to be approved).