Reporting from the ECR Winter School 2015 – Andy Chadwick (BGS) speaking on “CO₂ storage: a UK perspective”

This blog was provided by Mihaela Stevar, Imperial College London, whose attendance at the ECR Winter School 2015 was supported by the UKCCSRC.

After a first great afternoon with amazing talks, the second day of the Winter School started not just with the sun shining, but also with a fantastic talk given by Andy Chadwick from the British Geological Survey, who presented a UK perspective on CO₂ storage. I found Andy’s talk particularly enlightening and valuable, especially considering the fact that my own work finds its applicability mainly in the storage stage of CCS.

Andy’s presentation included an overview of potential UK storage sites, a technical characterization and comparison of the two main projects that are currently awaiting the green light to go ahead, namely Peterhead-Goldeneye and White Rose, and the latest research advancements on storage performance and long-term monitoring.

Andy started his presentation by showing potential locations for CO₂ storage around the UK and spoke about the ongoing “CO₂ Stored” database project, which is meant to provide data and advice on all UK storage options. Next, Andy showed a comparison of Peterhead and White Rose projects, and I’m fairly convinced that at the moment when he was talking about CO₂ injection into the Bunter Sandstone no one actually thought that they will have the opportunity to see part of this sandstone in Nottingham (special thanks to Philip Sharman who made this possible in the following day!).

The last part of Andy’s talk was focused on site capacity estimation and monitoring and again the Bunter Sandstone aquifer was used as a case study for capacity estimation and injection simulations that represent ongoing work at the British Geological Survey. Andy’s talk was concluded with details about storage site monitoring and the challenges associated with long term monitoring as well as with the case study of the Sleipner CO₂ storage site, which is the world’s longest running CO₂ storage project (i.e. injection started in 1996 and to date 15 million tonnes of CO₂ have been stored).