Enabling the next phase of CO₂ storage in the North Sea -September 2015 Strathclyde Biannual

This blog was written by Xin Liu who is a PhD student at Nottingham University and received funding to attend the Strathclyde Biannual from the UKCCSRC ECR meeting fund.

Capture and storage of CO₂ in geological formations is considered to be a potential measure to reduce global emissions. North Sea is an ideal storage site for UK, which has been proved to have no possible negative effects and risk to the environment and human health. Meanwhile, additional oil production using CO₂-EOR has lasting benefit to UK low-carbon electricity. At the UKCCSRC biannual meeting held at the University of Strathclyde, a session entitled “Enabling the next phase of CO₂ storage in the North Sea” was chaired by Prof Jon Gluyas, which aimed to share more about CO₂ storage in North Sea.

The first speaker in this session was Den Gammer from ETI and the topic of his presentation was “The role of hydrogen storage in a clean responsive power system”. In this presentation, he introduced the Energy System Modelling Environment (ESME) modeling system developed by ETI and showed the role of H₂ in power capacity post 2030, adoption of H₂ production, storage H₂ in salt caverns using the ESME modeling system. In his opinion, H₂ storage would be an alternative method to maximise use of CCS investment.

Next, Richard Heap, from ERP, gave a presentation named “CO₂ enhanced oil recovery”. He firstly highlighted the outline of CO₂-EOR in UK and key issues existing like technical challenges, synchronisation issue and geographical disconnect. Then he mentioned about the benefits and barriers of CO₂-EOR in the UK. In his opinion, reservoir performance and CO₂ price are the existing economic risks.

The final speaker was Prof Stuart Haszeldine from the University of Edinburgh/SCCS/UKCCSRC. His presentation entitled “CO₂ storage and enhanced oil recovery in the North Sea: securing a low-carbon future for the UK”. First of all, he gave a brief introduction about current situation of carbon storage all over the world and UK policy for next steps in CCS. After that he highlighted the benefits and advantages of the carbon storage in North Sea and gave suggestions for carbon storage in North Sea in the future.

At the end of this session, Prof Jon Gluyas led a panel discussion about future development of CO₂ storage in North Sea. And the speakers answered the questions from audience about tax-free policy for EOR and the price and transportation of hydrogen storage.