UKCCSRC Spring Conference 2025 (Strathclyde, 24-25 March 2025)

Our Spring 2025 Conference took place on 24-25th March 2025, at University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, with a Civic Reception and conference dinner on Monday 24th.

Over the two days we had a range of different CCS stakeholders presenting on current and future CCS work and research, through both technical and topical sessions.  The agenda and speaker bios are below.  There was also the option to join the keynote and plenary sessions virtually.

Registrations closed on Tuesday 18th March.  The ECR Meeting Fund was opened to support ECR attendance at this conference (closed Tuesday 11th March).

The Glasgow Convention Bureau provided a list of hotels near the venue and, if you were coming up for the weekend beforehand, there were also a number of businesses offering delegate discounts to keep you entertained!

Jump to:

• Speaker & chair biographies
• Presentations
• Recordings
• Poster gallery
• ECR blogs

Agenda

Day 1 – Monday 24th March 2025

Aaron Cahill, Heriot-Watt University

Aaron is an Assistant Professor of Applied Geoscience and Environmental Risk based within the Lyell Centre and The Institute of Geoenergy Engineering at Heriot Watt University where he leads the GeoEnergy Environmental Risk & Impact Lab (GERI Lab). The GERI lab investigates the environmental and risk-related impacts of geoenergy activities, with a particular focus on fugitive gas release and emissions. Aaron is a geoscientist and hydrogeologist with >15 years’ experience researching the incidence rate, mechanisms and environmental impacts of petroleum wellbore integrity failure and resultant fugitive methane gas migration, impacts and fate in the environment. Aaron’s work involves detecting and quantifying leakage of methane and carbon dioxide associated with petroleum wells, evaluating implications for GHG emissions and carbon capture and storage operations, and developing management and mitigation solutions to limit impacts to the climate.

Jeremy Carey, Exergetic & Chair of the UKCCSRC Board

Jeremy is currently MD of Exergetic Limited, helping large corporates, SMEs and public sector clients with aspects of R&D and development funding. He has worked on a wide range of energy transition projects including CCS, hydrogen, heat pumps, zero emission trucks and industrial process decarbonisation.

His previous experience includes six years leading 42 Technology, a company of ~40 engineers and scientists providing commercial R&D services, and six years at SSE, leading large generation projects in biomass, SCR, waste-to-energy and CCS. Jeremy was closely involved with the 100te/day capture plant at Ferrybridge and was the capture lead for the 2010-2013 incarnation of the 1Mte/yr Peterhead CCS project. Jeremy was Chair of the UKCCSRC Board from 2015 until handing over to Bryony Livesey in 2025.

Patrick Devine-Wright, University of Exeter

Patrick is an environmental social scientist with a primary interest in sustainable energy transitions, specifically social acceptance of low carbon technologies, community engagement and people-place relations. He is Director of the £6.25m ESRC-funded ACCESS (Advancing Capacity for Climate and Environment Social Science) leadership team that aims to increase the visibility and impact of social science contributions to tackling environmental problems. With expertise spanning human geography and environmental psychology, he was cited in the top 1% of social science scholars globally by Web of Science in 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022. He is Adjunct Professor in Geography in Trinity College, Dublin, Honorary Lecturer at the University of Liverpool, and received a Distinguished Visiting Scientist award from CSIRO, Australia. He has considerable experience advising policy and practice across scales, including as Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as a member of the DECC-Defra Social Science Expert Group, and Chair of the Devon Net Zero Task Force.

Kate Dobson, University of Strathclyde

Kate is a cross-disciplinary researcher working at the intersection between Engineering, Earth and the environment. She is a leading expert in applying 3D and 4D imaging techniques to geomaterials. She uses X-ray tomography and related techniques to visualise, quantify and understand the microstructure of materials, and how those materials evolve. She is a Reader in Geomaterials and Imaging at the University of Strathclyde, and is Director of the EPSRC-IM3AGES Facility.

Jon Gibbins, UKCCSRC and University of Sheffield

Jon is Professor of CCS at the University of Sheffield and director of the UK CCS Research Community Network+.  He has worked on energy engineering, fuel conversion and CCS for 45 years, initially in industry and then as a university academic.  Since 2002 Jon has been heavily involved in CCS activities, working on post-combustion capture and its effective integration and, through the UKCCSRC, helping to start now-mainstream UK initiatives on industrial decarbonisation (2012) and CCS clusters (2016). His personal research activities now centre around practical aspects of CCS deployment, with an emphasis on policy and economic requirements plus detailed analysis of matching capture plant designs to market conditions, supported in particular by the facilities at the Translational Energy Research Centre in Sheffield.  He is active in reviewing Best Available Technology (BAT) status for CO2 capture technologies and is also a Vice Chair of the UNECE Group of Experts on Cleaner Electricity Systems, specialising in CCS.

Stephen Glenville, DESNZ

Stephen is a Senior Policy Advisor in the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), part of the UK Government. For the last three years Stephen has worked on the policy design of the Dispatchable Power Agreement – the commercial framework to support investment and deployment of the natural gas-fired power stations equipped with CCS. Stephen is working on the Track 1 Power CCUS project, seeking to bring forward construction and operation of the world’s first commercial scale Power CCUS facility by the late 2020s. Stephen has also been involved in the development of the CO₂ Transport & Storage Network Code. Prior to joining the Department, Stephen was a pollution inspector for the Environment Agency for twelve years, regulating large combustion and waste incineration plant in Yorkshire, including Drax Power Station and Triton Power CCGTs, latterly working on the regulation of capture solvent emissions.

Sinéad Goodall, SUEZ

Sinéad is a Carbon Capture Graduate at SUEZ Recycling and Recovery UK focusing on SUEZ’s projects in the East Coast Cluster. Since starting with SUEZ in November 2023, she has worked on two large-scale EfW CCS projects, completing Pre-FEED studies and is currently working on further integration studies preparing for the ECC’s Track 1 expansion application. In addition to these large-scale engineering projects, her research interests also include further potential for CCUS in the waste industry including AD and Landfill. Other interests also include projects relating to the decarbonisation of waste and creating a circular economy. Sinéad’s background is in Chemistry graduating from Cardiff University and completed her Masters in Energy Science from Trinity College Dublin.

Clair Gough, University of Manchester

Clair is a Senior Research Fellow at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Manchester, with a focus on CCS and biomass energy with CCS (BECCS). She has extensive experience in energy-related social scientific research, including expert elicitation processes, public attitudes and responses, as well as integrated socio-technical assessments. Clair’s research aims to better understand social, technical and climate implications of CCS, and its role in achieving net zero. Her current research includes analysis of the conditions for establishing a social licence to operate decarbonisation and carbon removal technologies, including CCS and BECCS.

Stuart Haszeldine, UKCCSRC and University of Edinburgh

As Professor for CCS at the University of Edinburgh, Stuart has created the UK’s largest University group examining CO2 storage geology. He has over 40 years research experience in energy, innovating new approaches to oil and gas, radioactive waste, carbon capture and storage, and biochar. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2002 for research on radioactive waste disposal, awarded the Geological Society William Smith Medal in 2011 for work on the geochemistry of oil and gas field reservoir quality, appointed OBE in 2012 for service to climate change technologies. He is also the Director of SCCS and co-Director of the Edinburgh Climate Change Institute.

Ian Hunter, Net Zero Teesside Power

Ian joined the Net Zero Teesside project in 2018 and played a key role in developing the business models for CCS in the UK, including chairing the CCUS Advisory Group’s working group for power with carbon capture. Since then he has led Net Zero Teesside Power to Final Investment Decision, putting it on track to be the world’s first major gas power with CCS project.

Prior to this he worked for bp in a range of commercial and business development roles since 2007, with a focus on gas value chains.

Bryony Livesey, Former Director of UKRI-IDC

Bryony led the development and delivery of the Industrial Decarbonisation Challenge (IDC), part of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF).  IDC is a £210m programme of public investment with £261m match funding from industry, designed to deploy low carbon technologies and enabling infrastructure in heavily industrialised regions of the UK.  The programme has played a crucial role in identifying and readying industrial clusters for the next stage of development, with £21 billion of support announced by the government in March 2024.

Bryony was previously Head of Technology at Costain, with responsibility for the identification and development of new technology. She was a member of BEIS’ CCUS Cost Challenge Task Force, a Director of the CCSA (where she co-chaired the Technical Working Group) and chaired the Independent Advisory Panel for the UKCCSRC.  Bryony has extensive experience of a range of advanced technology sectors, including research and development, safety cases and international business, and spent four years as CEO of a company in Japan.  She has a PhD from Cambridge University and is a Chartered Engineer.

Mathieu Lucquiaud, UKCCSRC & University of Sheffield

Mathieu is Professor of Clean Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) at the University of Sheffield, and Deputy Director of the UKCCSRC.  He has worked on CO₂ capture and CCS since 2005 at Imperial College, University of Edinburgh and University Sheffield since 2022.  His current research interests include reducing residual CO₂ emissions from CCS to zero, derisking deployment of post-combustion capture, CCS for thermal power stations and in the waste sector, and Direct Air Capture.

In 2018, Mathieu launched the first Massive Open Online Course on Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) to increase awareness and understanding of the key role of CCS towards climate change mitigation. The course has now been taken by over 35,000 people in over 150 countries.

Sergey Martynov, University College London

Sergey is a Principal Research Fellow in the Department of Chemical Engineering at University College London (UCL). Over the past 15 years, he has been involved in several national and EU-funded research projects in the field of CCS, contributing to the development of methods and models for designing efficient, safe, and environmentally benign CO2 transport solutions. The outcomes of this research include the development of the extended Peng-Robinson Equation of State for solid-vapor equilibrium in CO2, the determination of Henry constants for impurities dissolved in CO2, models for predicting decompression and fracture propagation in CO2 pipelines, and recommendations for CO2 compression strategies and the optimal design of CO2 transport chains. He is currently a Co-Investigator in the C4U, CaLby2030, ENCASE, and EMPHATICAL research projects, which are funded by the Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe programmes.

Tony McCann, SEPA

With 21 years of frontline regulation experience at SEPA, Tony has tackled a varied array of issues when it comes to protecting Scotland’s environment.  He has investigated environmental crime, led enforcement action against offenders, strengthened SEPA’s use and deployment of regulatory powers, and contributed to the implementation of new enforcement tools, including the effective use of Variable and Fixed Monetary Penalties.

Now acting as the Decarbonisation Specialist, Tony brings this experience to work alongside Scottish industry, partner agencies and government bodies to navigate regulatory challenges, promote decarbonisation, and advance carbon capture and storage, all to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and meet Net Zero targets.

Daniel Mullen, SSE

Daniel is a chartered engineer with over seven years’ experience in the energy industry and a PhD in Post Combustion CCS. He acts as the CCS technology engineer for SSE Thermal, providing technical support to commercial projects to help them deploy post-combustion CCS to their thermal fleet, notably the proposed CCS enabled CCGTs at Peterhead and Keadby. Daniel also leads SSE Thermals engagement in number of R&D projects, many of which are in partnership with the UKCCSRC and is an avid supporter of open research and knowledge sharing in CCS.

Raphael Pfaeltzer, The Carbon Removers

Raphael is COO of The Carbon Removers.  Before that, he was Head of Strategy at Storegga and was involved in Storegga’s Direct Air Capture activities. Previously, Raphael spent 12 years at BCG, advising European corporates on strategy and corporate finance transactions.

Since 2024, The Carbon Removers have been removing CO₂ in the UK by capturing biogenic CO₂ from whisky distilleries and biomethane facilities, and permanently carbonating it in a building material. The resulting CDR credits have been bought by Autotrader, British Airways and others. From 2026 onwards, The Carbon Removers will provide European carbon removal credits, based on biogenic CO₂ from Northern Europe, permanently sequestered in INEOS’ “Greensand Future”.

Julia Race, University of Strathclyde

Prior to starting her academic career, Juia worked in industry for over 20 years, latterly in the pipeline industry for seven years as an integrity consultant for GE Oil and Gas. In this role, she was responsible for providing fitness-for-purpose, remaining life and corrosion assessments for onshore and offshore pipelines. She has also worked as a materials engineer in the petrochemical and power generation industries involved with the operation, maintenance and design of chemical and power plant. Julia’s primary research interest, developed since her move to academia from industry, is in the use of pipeline infrastructure to deliver pathways to Net Zero – primarily in the transportation of carbon dioxide (CO₂) for Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) schemes and hydrogen as a replacement for oil and gas in the energy mix.

Joseph Rainey, Howden/Chart Industries

Joseph is a Chartered Engineer who has worked for Howden/Chart Industries in various roles since his graduation from Glasgow University in 2003. In the last 12 years, Joseph has had a strong focus on commercial activities across various industries such as Transport, Energy, Infrastructure and O&G. His current role is as a product and business development manager for CO₂ capture and liquefaction solutions within Europe.

Over the last four years, Joseph has mainly been involved in decarbonisation with a focus on renewable H₂ and CCUS applications.

Jen Roberts, UKCCSRC & University of Strathclyde

Jen is deputy director of the Strathclyde Institute for Sustainable Communities and senior lecturer in Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. With a background in geoscience and CO2 geological storage, much of Jen’s research is all about understanding and accelerating socio-technical transitions to support a sustainable society. Jen is also the UKCCSRC’s Deputy Director and ECR Champion.

Mark Sommerfeld, CCSA

Mark is UK Director of the Carbon Capture Storage Association. He leads efforts to advocate for a robust policy and regulatory framework to advance the UK’s carbon capture and storage (CCS) sector. With over a decade of experience in the energy and environmental sectors, Mark has worked closely with renewable energy developers, government ministers, civil servants, energy suppliers, grid operators, financiers, and traders. Before joining the CCSA, he worked as Deputy Director of Policy at the Association for Renewable Energy and Clean Technology (REA), where he championed renewable and clean technologies across power, heat, and transport. Notably this included leading policy initiatives for BECCS development in the biomass power, waste-to-energy, and anaerobic digestion sectors. Mark holds degrees from the University of Cambridge and the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.

Jamie Tarlton, Climate Change Committee

Jamie Tarlton coordinates the Climate Change Committee’s work on Carbon Capture and Storage. He also coordinates, produces analysis for, and writes for the CCC’s reports. This has included the Seventh Carbon Budget, progress reports for the UK, Scottish and Welsh governments, and target advice reports for the Scottish and Northern Ireland governments. In addition, he coordinates the CCC’s work on the Emissions Trading Scheme. He has previously worked for the UK Government on CCS and whole systems energy modelling, producing analysis for the Net Zero Strategy and the Sixth Carbon Budget impact assessment.

Karen Turner, University of Strathclyde

Karen is Director of the Centre for Energy Policy at the University of Strathclyde, which she founded in 2014. Her research is focused on the critical challenge of ensuring that the energy and wider net zero transitions deliver sustainable and more equitable prosperity. Her work continues to shape policy and public debates. For example, helping to make the case for public support of residential energy efficiency programmes and addressing public policy challenges in unlocking value from the deployment of large-scale decarbonisation solutions such as electric vehicles and carbon capture and storage.

Karen has served on expert panels for a range of organisations including the National Infrastructure Commission, the Climate Change Committee and UK Government. She was also a Commissioner on the Scottish Government’s first Just Transition Commission. Before leading CEP, Professor Turner held academic posts at Glasgow and Heriot Watt Universities.

Ben Wetenhall, UKCCSRC and Newcastle University

Ben Wetenhall is a lecturer at Newcastle University. His research interest is decarbonising industrial processes and energy generation, primarily through transportation by pipeline of carbon dioxide (CO₂) for Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) schemes and hydrogen for use as an alternate energy source. Some examples of previous research topics include material and specification requirements for novel pipelines, the impact of impurities on CO₂ pipelines and shipping, pipeline failure frequency and consequence analysis (including developing analytical and CFD CO₂ building ingress models), CCS network flexibility, and the effect of injecting cold CO₂ on the surrounding rock.

Yihuai Zhang, University of Glasgow

Yihuai has been a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Geo-Energy Engineering at the University of Glasgow since 2022. Before that, he was a Research Associate at Imperial College London and Heriot-Watt University. He obtained his PhD degree from Curtin University in 2018, while working at the National Geosequestration Laboratory, Australia. His research is at the forefront of energy storage innovation, focusing on the fluid dynamics of multiphase flow in porous media across scales ranging from nanometers to large geological formations. By unravelling the complexities of fluid behaviour in porous media and subsurface rocks, Yihuai aims to advance energy technologies such as carbon capture and geological storage, hydrogen storage, optimise the recovery of geo-energy resources, and enhance the performance of fuel cells. His work is instrumental in developing sustainable energy solutions and addressing global energy challenges. He has published more than 35 journal articles with more than 3000 citations.

 Presentations from our conference sessions are available below (where we have permission to share them).

 Recordings from our conference sessions are available below (where we have permission to share).

Posters from the poster reception on Monday 24th March 2025 are below (where we have permission to share).