Seven research projects funded to support CCS deployment in the UK

category

As CCS in the UK gathers momentum, the UKCCSRC’s latest funding call invited rapid targeted research projects aimed at directly support deployment.

“For this call, we deliberately took a different approach from our usual funding calls, prioritising research that can make an immediate and practical contribution to UK CCS scale‑up,” Dr Jen Roberts, UKCCSRC Deputy Director, explained.

“The result was a series of highly focused, rapid‑response projects, geared towards delivering the knowledge needed to support large‑scale, safe and effective deployment of CCS in the UK.”

The call received a high number of excellent applications and the UKCCSRC funded seven projects, covering five research themes.  Those themes address critical gaps identified through close collaboration between stakeholder partners and UKCCSRC investigators, directly relating to real‑world deployment challenges.

Many congratulations to the seven successful projects:

• James Brean, University of Birmingham – Integrating Ultrafine Particle Formation into CCS Amine Emission Modelling
• Aaron Cahill, Heriot-Watt University – From leakage potential to proportionate monitoring and response: a decision framework for legacy wells in UK CCS
• Marius Dewar, Plymouth Marine Laboratory – HYpersaline Plume Emission and Risk from CO₂ Storage (HYPER-CO2)
• Danial Qadir, Teesside University – A Marker-Based Framework for Wastewater Treatment Decision Making in Amine Based Capture Plants
• Germán Rodríguez, University of Bristol – DAS as a tool for passive seismic monitoring and imaging offshore CCS sites
• Hanif Sutiyoso, National Oceanography Centre – Calibrating Fibre-Optic DAS Response for Sonic-Frequency CCS Monitoring
• Na Yan, University of Leeds – 4D numerical modelling to predict facies heterogeneity and brine migration pathways for CCS risk assessment around legacy wells in the UK North Sea

A total of £70k was awarded to the projects, which will last three months.  The UKCCCSRC is able to fund these projects thanks to their ongoing funding support from the EPSRC.

Results from the projects will be shared with the CCS community after completion through our website, LinkedIn and newsletter (sign up here).

 

With regular media headlines about global warming and its consequences, the need to address the climate crisis has never been more important and urgent.  

When carbon capture and storage (CCS) is mentioned in media reports and articles, it’s often with inaccuracies and bias.  The UK Carbon Capture and Storage Research Centre would like to address five of the common myths.

Myth 1 – CCS just enables fossil fuel industries to continue business as usual

The goal of most people working in CCS is to see deep emission cuts to sustain and save the planet. Many international climate organisations such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and International Energy Agency (IEA), as well as the UK Government, state that CCS is needed in all scenarios to reach net zero emissions, in the timeframes required to curb dangerous climate change.

CCS is an essential technology for decarbonising hard-to-abate sectors like cement, steel and chemicals – industries that are required for building the wind turbines and electric vehicle batteries that are also part of the journey to net zero, and providing key chemicals such as fertilisers. CCS is also one of the ways to deliver negative emissions, or CO₂ removals, that put the ‘net’ in net zero – for example, the Orca direct air capture plant in Iceland which is capturing and storing 4,000 tonnes of CO₂ per year.

It is true that many current CCS projects around the world are connected to fossil fuel industries. This is due primarily because of investment to date and industry expertise. Fossil fuel usage cannot just be switched off instantly, from either an energy or employment point of view. Rather than allowing these businesses to continue polluting unrestrained, with CCS, emissions can be decarbonised during fossil fuel phase-down and phase-out.

Another reason why people link CCS with fossil fuel companies is because some projects plan to use the rock formations in depleted oil or gas wells, as well as offshore oil and gas infrastructure, as permanent CO₂ storage sites.

Myth 2 – CCS storage is in “caverns”, unsafe and there isn’t enough capacity

Despite government officials and some media outlets sometimes stating the CO₂ will be stored underground in caverns, it will not. For the UK, all currently planned storage is offshore in rock formations over 1km beneath the seafloor.  CO₂ will be stored there permanently, i.e. for millennia, rather than temporarily utilised, for example in the carbonated drinks industry.

Companies involved in carbon storage are strongly motivated to keep it locked away for both environmental and business/financial reasons.  Research has shown that CO₂ can be safely stored underground for millions of years.  Techniques have been, and continue to be, researched and developed to monitor CO₂ underground and ensure storage integrity.

There is a vast capacity for carbon storage underground – in the UK alone, it has been estimated that we have 16-20 gigatonnes of storage capacity in abandoned hydrocarbon fields, and 19-716 gigatonnes in saline aquifers. This is enough to store over 500 years of the UK’s annual emissions. Visit the Clean Air Task Force’s interactive map to find out more about the size and development of storage sites across the globe.

Myth 3 – CCS is expensive

The cost of not taking action on climate change is far far greater than the cost of acting, and the sooner and faster we act, the less costly it will be. Every year the estimated cost of inaction and adaptation get more and more expensive.

CCS is also a relatively cheap way to decarbonise the “hard-to-abate” energy intensive sectors like cement, steel and chemicals, which account for 20% of global emissions.

The most expensive part of the CCS technology chain is carbon capture. There has already been a significant amount of cost reduction in recent years, and research is constantly being undertaken in order to reduce costs further.  Early adopters of CCS technology can also help to drive down adoption costs for lower-income countries, often the ones most affected by climate change.

Another significant part of the cost of CCS is in creating new infrastructure, so existing facilities and transportation systems need to be used wherever possible.  In the UK, the focus of CCS rollout is through clusters – bringing together multiple CO₂ emitters in a geographical area, to share transportation and storage infrastructure.  Costs will also reduce as more deployment happens.

Myth 4 – CCS is unproven

CCS technology IS proven and currently being used all around the world. The 2023 Global Status of CCS Report found that at mid-September 2022 there were 41 operational CCS facilities, with 26 under construction and 325 in development.

Commercially, the slow adoption of CCS is due primarily to weak policy frameworks, business models and investment, and a low carbon price. Until recently, there have not been adequate incentives to make CCS happen at the quantity and scale needed to comfortably establish the sector. These still differ widely depending on country and region. 

CCS, like any other new industrial activity, needs to develop how to regulate, finance and insure the industry.  Environmental regulations must be very thorough.  These areas can get stuck in a chicken-and-egg situation, however, where they cannot be put in place until projects are in place, and projects cannot be put in place… (you get the idea).  

Myth 5 – We should be focusing on renewables not “wasting” money on CCS

CCS is commonly viewed as a technology that is competing with renewable energy for public and private investment.  This is wrong.  In reality, investments in CCUS and renewable energy can be mutually reinforcing rather than competing.  There is a high degree of connectivity between different solutions, and the best thing for the climate is to utilise them all together. Renewables and low-carbon tech need vastly more investment, as do ‘circular economy’ measures that reduce the quantities of materials that need to be mined and refined.

We need an “and/and” situation, not an “either/or” one.  Every tool in the toolkit will be required to fully tackle climate change.  No tool is perfect.  Many businesses involved in renewable energy and reducing emissions also create CO₂ emissions in their manufacturing processes (e.g. the steel needed for wind turbines). 

Natural carbon sinks like forests and peatlands are important for locking away CO₂ and bring lots of ecological benefits too. However, they cannot pull out enough CO₂ from the air to hit net zero targets and do not lock it away for thousands of years like carbon storage. In addition, climate change is impacting the stability and resilience of these carbon sinks.

And, while planting more trees is important, we would need to plant a forest approximately the size of 1&½ Indias to offset global emissions for just ONE year.  There are also complications and concerns about the credibility of carbon credits/offsets. 

Conclusion

CCS might not win hearts and minds the way other climate change technologies do, like wind/solar power and electric vehicles, but it is essential for stopping the world heating up catastrophically, as well as removing existing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from 200 years of emissions.

Its reputation is confounded by the fact that it is not one simple or perfect technology – there are many CCS technologies and they can be applied to multiple different applications and sectors, as well as developed and funded in different ways. While CCS is vital, it also needs to be done right, and in a way that drives down emissions, supports transition and reduces global inequalities. 

Written by Jen Roberts (UKCCSRC Deputy Director and University of Strathclyde), Mathieu Lucquiaud (University of Sheffield) and Mel Green (UKCCSRC Communications Officer)

After five years of research activity, the UK Greenhouse Gas Removal Research Programme has now come to an end and published a series of policy briefs disseminating its findings and insights.

As highlighted in the UK Climate Change Committee’s recent report to parliament, further action is needed for the UK to meet its net zero ambitions, and greenhouse gas removal is seen by many as an important aspect of such action. The UK Greenhouse Gas Removal Research programme was launched in 2017, co-supported by three research councils and the UK Government. It brought together a wide range of partners and collaborators to address some of the main uncertainties surrounding the use of greenhouse gas removal to meet climate change targets.

The documents summarise the results from some of the individual projects and present future recommendations, as well as suggested areas of inquiry for the next generation of research projects and demonstrators.

Policy briefs are available in the following areas:

• Soils research to deliver greenhouse gas removals and abatement technologies
• Feasibility of afforestation and biomass energy with carbon capture storage for greenhouse gas removal
• Comparative assessment and region-specific optimisation of greenhouse gas removal 
• Metrics for emission removal limits for nature.
• Assessing the mitigation deterrence effects of greenhouse gas removal
• Greenhouse gas removal in the iron and steel industry [to be published]

The next stage of research into GGR has already started with the launch of the GGR Demonstrators (GGR-D) Programme in 2022, which is coordinated by the Greenhouse Gas Removal hub (CO2RE)

Yesterday, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) released a number of announcements, reports and documents focusing on the CCUS Innovation competition and wider work by AECOM for BEIS reviewing ‘Next Generation Carbon Capture Technology’.

Of particular interest is the “Carbon capture and storage (CCS): knowledge sharing” collection, which shares key results and lessons learned (key knowledge deliverables (KKDs)) on large-scale CCUS projects that help accelerate CCUS cost reduction, benefit academia and the CCUS industry, and raise the public profile of CCUS.

These CCUS Innovation 1.0 KKDs are available for seven historic CCUS innovation projects:

• HyNet CCUS (May 2022)
• Tigre Technologies (May 2022)
• 8 Rivers Capital (May 2022)
• Northern Endurance Partnership (May 2022)
• Acorn CCUS (May 2022, with remaining KKDs published shortly)
• C-Capture (May 2022, with remaining KKDs published shortly)
• Translational Energy Research Centre, University of Sheffield (May 2022, with remaining KKDs published shortly)

The third Next Generation Carbon Capture Technologies workshop is taking place online on Thursday 23rd June, 1-4pm – visit our registration page to take part. Recordings and documents from the previous two workshops are also available.

We’re delighted to share with our community the publication in Nature of UKCCSRC Deputy Director Paul Fennell’s article, ‘Cement and steel – nine steps to net zero’, co-authored with Justin Driver, Christopher Bataille and Steven J Davis.

To achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050, efforts must be made to decarbonise industrial processes including cement and steel production, currently seen as the dirtiest industries on the planet.  This article evaluates the potential impact of 9 approaches, including the adoption of the latest technology in plants; reducing demand by reviewing building codes; reinventing steel and cement production and using alternative fuels; the use of carbon capture and storage, storage of CO2 in concrete; recycling steel; and suggestions on how to overcome the economic hurdles of scaling up low carbon heavy industries.

You can read ‘Cement and steel – nine steps to net zero’ here.

As part of the cluster sequencing process, BEIS has listed the projects eligible to move to the next stage of Phase-2 of the Cluster sequencing process.

BEIS received submissions for power, industrial carbon capture (ICC) and hydrogen to connect onto Track-1 clusters East Coast Cluster, Hynet and the reserve Scottish cluster.

The projects all met the eligibility criteria outlined in Phase-2 guidance.

You can view the list of eligible projects on the BEIS website.

We’re delighted to share news from one of our core research team, Dr Clair Gough and colleagues Muir Freer, Andrew Welfle and Amanda Lea-Langton on their new paper “Putting Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage in a Spatial Context: What Should Go Where?”

The paper explores the implications of siting a bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) facility for carbon emission performances for three case-study supply chains using the Carbon Navigation System (CNS) model. The supply chains they looked at were a wheat straw derived BECCS-power, a municipal solid waste derived BECCS-waste-to-energy and a sawmill residue derived BECCS-hydrogen.

A BECCS facility needs to be carefully sited, taking into consideration its local low carbon infrastructure, available biomass, and geography for successful deployment and achieving a favourable net-negative carbon balance. They found that on average, across the three supply chains a 10 km shift in the siting of the BECCS facility resulted in an 8.6–13.1% increase in spatially explicit supply chain emissions. BECCS facilities producing low purity CO₂ at high yields had lower spatial emissions when located within the industrial clusters, while those producing high purity CO₂ at low yields performed better outside the clusters.

The team also generated a map identifying which of the three modelled supply chains delivers the lowest spatially explicit supply chain emission options for any given area of the UK at a 1 MtCO₂/yr capture scale.

You can read the paper here: Putting Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage in a Spatial Context: What Should Go Where?

We’re delighted to share with our community the publication of the new paper, ‘Upstream decarbonization through a carbon takeback obligation:  An affordable backstop climate policy’, from Prof Stuart Haszeldine, UKCCSRC Deputy Director, co-authored with Stuart Jenkins, Eli Mitchell-Larson, Matthew C Ives, and Myles Allen.

This paper demonstrates how a ‘Carbon takeback obligation’ mechanism, if enforced consistently, would enable hydrocarbon industries to meet Net Zero targets by 2050, as outlined in the Paris Agreement.

Unlike current proposals for carbon taxes or ETS certificates which effectively allow hydrocarbon industries to continue polluting; this new mechanism will place an obligation directly onto extractors and importers of fossil fuels to safely and permanently, dispose of a progressively rising fraction of the carbon dioxide (CO₂) generated by their activities and the products that they sell.

This paper addresses the key global economic implications for governments, industry and consumers; and explores the associated risks.

You can read the paper here: Upstream decarbonization through a carbon takeback obligation: An affordable backstop climate policy.

Well done to all involved.

An international group of researchers, including UKCCSRC Director Prof Jon Gibbins, has carried out in-depth analyses of the climate impact of blue hydrogen. The study confirms that blue hydrogen, produced from natural gas and using carbon capture and storage processes, can play an essential positive role in the energy transition, when used with certain conditions.

Hydrogen: green, blue and grey

The method used to produce the hydrogen determines its environmental performance. The optimal form is green hydrogen, produced by the electrolysis of water. For hydrogen to be green, the electricity used must come from renewable sources, such as hydro, wind or solar power, which makes it close to carbon neutral.  Hydrogen produced in this way is however expensive and not universally available – due to the lack of renewable electricity and electrolyser capacity.

Most hydrogen is currently grey hydrogen, produced from natural gas or other fossil fuels, which does not benefit the environment, as its production has a negative climate impact and energy is lost during conversion.

Blue hydrogen offers a compromise. Whilst it is also produced from natural gas using a process known as steam reforming, which heats and then splits the gas into hydrogen and carbon dioxide, the CO₂ is not allowed to escape into the atmosphere; it is captured and stored permanently underground.

Climate impacts and blue hydrogen

The research is an in depth study into the climate impact of blue hydrogen and was led by Heriot-Watt University and the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Villigen, Switzerland and carried out with an international collaboration of researchers from different institutes. The group used specific models for detailed simulation of processes such as carbon capture in order to model the production of blue hydrogen. The results were then fed into environmental performance models in order to be able to replicate the entire production chain, from natural gas extraction to carbon capture and storage.

The evaluation of climate impacts shows a nuanced picture: whether blue hydrogen actually benefits the climate depends to a large extent on how much methane is lost on the way from the point of extraction to hydrogen production, and how effectively carbon is captured during the steam reforming of the natural gas.

High quality technology

The key to generating blue hydrogen in the most climate-friendly way is therefore to ensure a high standard of technology. Lead author of the study Christian Bauer from PSI’s Laboratory for Energy Systems Analysis, explained: “Countries such as Norway are good role models. They are already able to extract and transport the natural gas with virtually no losses and emissions of less than 0.5 percent. If almost all the CO₂ emissions are captured during the reforming process and stored underground in former natural gas fields in the North Sea, for example – a solution already proven to be safe and effective over many years – then this form of blue hydrogen is almost as climate friendly as the green form.”

Read a full press release from Heriott-Watt on this study here: https://www.hw.ac.uk/news/articles/2021/blue-hydrogen-can-help-protect-the-climate.htm

View the full original publication here: https://doi.org/10.1039/D1SE01508G

Our Director, Prof Jon Gibbins, has provided written evidence to the Environmental Audit Committee’s inquiry, Technological Innovations and Climate Change: Negative Emissions Technologies.

The Environmental Audit Committee is conducting an overarching inquiry looking at technological innovations which could contribute to tackling climate change. The next aspect of the inquiry will look at Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs). An oral evidence session will be held in late November 2021.

Read Jon’s evidence here, and see more about the inquiry and evidence from other witnesses here, with a news item containing its terms of reference here.