UKCCSRC Autumn Programme Conference, Edinburgh, September 2019

Yiji Lu, Newcastle University and Ariane D. Kamkeng, University of Sheffield reflect on the opening and closing sessions of the UKCCSRC Autumn Programme Conference held on 4th – 5th of September, held at the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation.

Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation

Wednesday 4th September

Welcome and introduction

The conference kicked off on Wednesday with registration and a very nice lunch then Prof Stuart Haszeldine made a welcome speech starting the UKCCSRC Autumn Network Conference 2019.

Conference begins

Director UKCCSRC and Principle Investigator, Prof. Jon Gibbins

Agenda of the conference

Government’s Net Zero emissions

First things: health and safety. Prof. Stuart Haszeldine gave a brief overview of the facilities at the Centre for Carbon Innovation, where to find the emergency exits, resting rooms, nearest café (for some caffeine-break) etc. He then underlined that UKCCSRC conferences/meetings are about research, the carried out, ongoing and to come projects and most importantly about networking and interactions between researchers and industrials, early career and experienced, and sharing our knowledge to make the CCUS (carbon capture usage and storage) concept go forward.

Prof. Haszeldine also reminded the importance of building a society with low and zero carbon emissions and that CCUS has the potential to make a big impact on achieving the emissions targets to reduce the CO₂ emissions in such a way to limit the global average temperature below 1.5 °C.  Finally, he gave the agenda of the conference and introduced upcoming CCUS events such as the Accelerating CCUS conference to be held in Edinburgh on the 28 – 29th November.

Updates from UKRI and BEIS

The second session of the UKCCSRC conference in Edinburgh outlined the updates from UKRI and BEIS. Brian Alison, Assistant Head CCUS R&D, Innovation and International Engagement, gave a presentation regarding updates from BEIS.

Update from BEIS

UKRI update presentation

Brian reiterated the UK’s commitment to the CCUS mission innovation challenges. In collaboration with several other countries, the UK is planning on deploying CCUS facilities in the mid-2020s with the aim of accelerating and maturing CCUS technologies in order to achieve the CO₂ reduction targets. Although some delays have been observed, he explained that the UK is currently involved in about 10 to 12 projects. Furthermore, UK is looking to bid the CGACT 16.

Brian also presented the top priorities for BEIS and it was observed that the ways to remove carbon from the atmosphere are among the top 3 priorities with an increase of roughly 12 to 25% from 2016 to 2019.

Dr Lizzy Bent, Portfolio Manager in EPSRC provided an update for the UKRI’s development plan for CCS research. She introduced the Energy Fellowship Priority area of EPSRC, which will be updated on 30th Oct 2019. Dr Bent also provided an update of the overview of the Industrial Challenge Fund from UKRI encouraging researchers to work on the Industrial Decarbonisation Challenge.

Thursday 5th September

Closing Remarks

In the end of the Panel Session, Jeremy Carey, Chair of UKCCSRC board announced the next UKCCSRC Network summarised research topics which have been discussed in the conference and announced the closer of the UKCCS Research Centre Autumn Programme Conference. Jeremy Carey introduced the next UKCCSRC Network Conference will be organised in April 2020 and all the colleagues working in the CCS research topics are welcome to join the network conference.

From left to right, Brian Allison, BEIS; Jeremy Carey, 42 Technology; David Reiner, University of Cambridge; Tony Espie, BP international, Mona MøInvik, SINTEF Energy Research

This blog was co-authored by Yiji Lu, Newcastle University and Ariane D. Kamkeng, University of Sheffield.