International CCS at the September 2015 Strathclyde Biannual

Written by Hayley Vosper from BGS, whose attendance at the UKCCSRC Strathclyde Biannual Meeting was supported by the ECR Meeting Fund.

The session on International CCS consisted of six talks from researchers around the world, giving updates on the current state of CCS in their respective countries.

The first talk was given by Tania Constable from CO₂CRC and was based around the past, present and future of CCS in Australia. In the past large grants have been awarded to CCS projects but the current situation poses a more difficult business case scenario; Tania summarised some of the strategies being used to improve this. Four of the major projects in Australia were then outlined: Gorgon, CarbonNet, the CO₂CRC Otway project and the National Deep Earth Research Facility.

In the second talk we heard of how disappointments in the suspension of the FutureGen project may have provided opportunities for 16 new projects working on novel CO₂ capture solvents. These include exciting proposals in the areas of nanoparticles and organic hybrid materials. Alissa Park from Columbia University explained about some recent work with China in the large scale steel industry and carbon mineralization.

Thirdly, Jan Brouwer from CATO explained about the CCS landscape in the Netherlands, including the vision for CCS. Jan talked about ERA-NET (ACT) and the Transport and Storage Plan as well as political debates regarding responsibility for CO₂ emissions and the need for government support. ROAD is a full scale demonstration project with FID expected in 2016, which hopes to utilize captured CO₂ in greenhouses as well as providing geological storage.

Next we focussed on the situation in Norway with the Research Council of Norway, GASSNOVA and Industry working together and the aim of a full scale plant by 2020. Åse Slagtern from the Research Council of Norway told us about the Technology Centre Mongstad and opportunities for testing and improving new technology. There are lots of large projects in Norway including BIGCCS, SUCCESS, ECCSEL and others. CLIMIT has been supporting a range of projects since 2005. 

Afterwards Dehao Ju from Shanghai Jiao Tong University spoke of 7 demonstration projects in China, the opportunities of large scale emissions and storage potential, and the costs associated with long distance transportation and security risks in densely populated areas. SJTU has a range of laboratories working on various capture technologies as well as utilization and storage of CO₂.

The final talk was about the Guangdong Offshore CCUS Project (GOCCUS), a UK-China collaboration. It was heartening to hear Xi Liang from the University of Edinburgh speak of provincial government interest and support for CCUS. GOCCUS started in 2006 and are aiming for a 1MT/yr capture plant with offshore storage, currently they are still expanding and building partnerships around the world.

A theme of this session was the current challenges facing CCS and how to take CCS forward into the future. International collaboration is clearly an important part of this and I was encouraged to hear about so many new and established partnerships.