UKCCSRC Spring Conference (Cardiff, 28-29 March 2023)

We had a fantastic Spring 2023 conference – “CCS from geographically dispersed industries” – looking at the challenge of CCS from industries that are not directly connected to a pipeline CO₂ transport system, a key issue for many emission sources.  It took place at Queen’s Building, Cardiff University on Tuesday 28th and Wednesday 29th March.

Over 120 in-person delegates and 60 virtual attendees joined us for keynotes, plenaries, parallel sessions, a poster and networking reception, and a conference dinner at Cardiff City Hall.

Recordings, slides and posters (where we have permission to share them) are available below, as well as blog posts from ECRs whose attendance we supported with our ECR Meeting Fund.

Jump to:

• Agenda
• Speaker & chair biographies
• Recordings
• Presentations
• Poster gallery
• Blogs

Here’s the agenda:

Day 1 – Tuesday 28 March 2023

Enrico Andreoli, Swansea University

Dr Enrico Andreoli is the Carbon Capture & Utilisation (CCU) expert and group leader at the Energy Safety Research Institute of Swansea University. His research, teaching, and engagement activities are related to energy and resource sustainability. He is interested in technologies for CCU, focusing in particular on the development of advanced carbon dioxide capture and utilisation materials to enable the deployment of CCU at large scale, especially for industrial decarbonisation. Following an across-scales approach, Dr Andreoli with his collaborators offer a unique approach to develop practical solutions to decarbonisation.

Luke Bailey, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero

Luke Bailey is a Senior Policy Advisor at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) who leads on the development of the future policy framework for power CCUS. Luke has worked on energy policy development and delivery for the past nine years across Ofgem and BEIS/DESNZ covering the areas of CCUS, renewable heat and renewable electricity.

Clare Bond, University of Aberdeen

Professor Clare Bond is an Earth Scientist interested in the interactions of Earth processes and people. Her research activities aim to achieve impact on and accelerate our energy transition to net zero. She is Chief Scientist for the NERC led UKRI Carbon Storage Research Facility scoping study funded by the UKRI infrastructure fund, and a member of the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management advising UK Government on radioactive waste disposal. She is also a Director of Scottish Carbon Capture and Storage. She focuses on research across a range of topics including how the crust deforms because of natural and anthropogenic processes, investigating uncertainties and human biases in subjective data interpretation and links between society and science. Her research impacts contemporary challenges including carbon storage, science communication, understanding and communicating uncertainty, geothermal energy, and radioactive waste disposal.

Ben Burggraaf, Net Zero Industry Wales

Native of the Netherlands, Ben Burggraaf began his career in 2002 at the Corus R&D facility in the Netherlands and was appointed as the Energy Optimisation Manager at the Port Talbot Steelworks in 2007. In 2014, he made the switch to Welsh Water and was responsible for the day-to-day energy costs of >4,000 of the company’s sites across Wales. Four years later, he was appointed as the Head of Energy, leading on all aspects of energy management for Welsh Water, including developing and leading the company’s Net Zero Strategy. In 2022, Ben was appointed as the first CEO of Net Zero Industry Wales, supporting the industrial clusters in Wales on their Journey to Net Zero.

Christian Calvillo, University of Strathclyde

Christian Calvillo is a Research Fellow at Centre for Energy Policy, University of Strathclyde, working on a number of projects in different energy areas, including electrification of transport and heat, energy efficiency, hydrogen and industrial decarbonisation. He did his PhD studies as part of the Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate programme on Sustainable Energies Technologies and Strategies (SETS), hosted by Comillas Pontifical University, Spain; Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands; and the Royal institute of Technology, Sweden. Christian’s research interests include energy system modelling, decarbonisation scenario analysis, industrial decarbonisation, CCUS, renewable energy integration, fuel and transport poverty, and economic and policy analysis.

Diarmaid Clery, University of Manchester

Diarmaid Clery is a Research Associate at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, which he joined in 2019 upon completing his PhD at the University of Leeds. He now works as part of IDRIC, working with stakeholders from CCUS clusters and the UK public to establish a social license for industrial decarbonisation. His background is in engineering, having worked as an engineer in the energy industry and completed his PhD in technical aspects of greenhouse gas removal. The overall aim of his research is to understand the interdisciplinary issues related to tackling climate change, including decarbonisation and greenhouse gas removal.

Emily Cox, Universities of Oxford and of Cardiff

Emily Cox is a research associate at the Universities of Oxford and of Cardiff. She is a social scientist in energy and climate, with expertise in public attitudes and behaviours, risk, resilience and socio-technical systems. Her research focuses on public perceptions of carbon removal techniques. Understanding public attitudes is crucial for the ethical and effective development of new technologies, and Emily’s work aims to enhance public participation in climate innovation. Emily previously worked as a lecturer in Psychology at Cardiff University and taught Energy Policy at the University of Sussex. Emily is based in Bristol and holds a PhD in Science and Technology Studies.

Tim Dixon, IEAGHG

Tim Dixon is the Director of IEAGHG, an international research organisation, and is responsible for IEAGHG delivering the technical evidence base to progress carbon capture and storage (CCS) to members and wider stakeholders, and for international knowledge sharing through the GHGT conferences and numerous workshops. Tim has extensive experience representing CCS in UNFCCC and other international agreements since 2004. Outside IEAGHG, Tim is a Director on the Board for The International CCS Knowledge Centre, Canada, an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Texas in Austin, and an Honorary Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh. Prior to IEAGHG, Tim worked on CCS and clean energy technologies for the UK government and for AEA Technology (UK). He was also an original Board Member of the UK CCS Research Centre.

Muir Freer, University of Manchester

Dr Muir Freer is a Research Associate with the Tyndall Centre at the University of Manchester. His research focuses on the carbon-optimal and fiscally-optimal modelling and simulation of Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) and other CCS supply chains in the UK at high spatial resolution. His research takes a particular interest in developing CCS integration pathways for dispersed emitters utilising a mixture of pipeline and non-pipeline transportation methods.

Jon Gibbins, UKCCSRC and University of Sheffield

Professor Jon Gibbins has worked on energy engineering, fuel conversion and CCS for 45 years, initially in industry and then as a university academic, latterly leading national academic research initiatives. He is a Chartered Engineer, a Member of the IMechE, a Fellow of the Institute of Energy and Professor of CCS at the University of Sheffield. Since 2005, Jon has played a leading role in UK CCS academic capacity building, growing the UK CCS Research Centre through his role as Director, as an inclusive and open virtual national hub. His research activities centre around engagement with industry and policymakers on practical aspects of CCS deployment, with an emphasis on policy and economic requirements plus detailed practical analysis of matching capture plant designs to market conditions.

Aaron Goater, Baringa

Aaron currently leads work on industrial decarbonisation and hard-to-decarbonise sectors at the consultancy Baringa, which he joined in November 2022. He was previously at the UK Climate Change Committee for six years where he led their work on industrial decarbonisation, fuel supply decarbonisation, trade and consumption emissions (and pulled together their analysis on CCS), and during his time at the CCC he provided influential advice to Government on the setting of the UK’s Net Zero target and Sixth Carbon Budget. Aaron also previously worked at the UK Parliament for five years, providing impartial energy advice to MPs and peers, and at the British Geological Survey, modelling geological CO2 storage – a topic in which he holds a PhD.

Clair Gough, UKCCSRC and University of Manchester

Dr Clair Gough 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). Clair has extensive experience in energy-related social scientific research, including expert elicitation processes, public attitudes and responses, and ethical assessment, 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 license 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, and in 2021 he was appointed Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He is also the Director of SCCS.

Ruth Herbert, CCSA

Ruth joined the CCSA in 2021 following a public sector career spanning two decades. As Director of Strategy at the Low Carbon Contracts Company, Ruth implemented two key features of today’s electricity market – the CfD and Capacity Market – establishing LCCC as a trusted advisor to government on decarbonisation. At the Department of Energy and Climate Change, Ruth headed the EMR Programme Office, pre-White Paper through to the Energy Act 2013, negotiated the EU Directive on CO2 storage and delivered the 2009 Ministerial Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum. She was an economic adviser at HM Treasury and City of London Corporation.

Chris Holdsworth, University of Edinburgh

Chris is a final year PhD student at the University of Edinburgh where he is testing the use of natural isotope tracers in verifying CO2 storage in geological reservoirs. He works closely with Carbfix, an Icelandic CO2 mineral storage company, testing natural geochemical tracers on active CCS and CDR projects operated by Carbfix in Iceland. Chris spent last summer in Iceland working for Carbfix and is currently on placement with the lead developer of the Acorn project and Scottish CCS cluster, Storegga.

Jasmin Kemper, IEAGHG

Jasmin Kemper is the technical programme technical advisor at IEAGHG and has managed technical studies on CO2 dehydration, pipeline transportation, accounting for GHG emissions from Bio-CCS and CO2-EOR, CCS clusters, regional CCS developments and unburnable carbon. Her other work areas include IEAGHG’s network on solid looping technologies, sustainability issues, LCA, non-CO2 GHGs and CO2 utilisation within geological formations.

Paul Kirkman, Promethean Particles

Paul Kirkman joined Promethean Particles in 2022, where he leads Promethean’s R&D team and efforts into the scalable, low-cost production of Metal Organic Frameworks (MOFs) as commercially-viable sorbents for CCS. Prior to joining Promethean, Paul was a senior researcher and team lead at Lubrizol Limited, where his research focused on the development of fuel-efficient and emission reducing lubricant additives for transportation. Paul holds a PhD in Chemistry from the Electrochemistry and Interfaces Group at the University of Warwick.

Xi Liang, University College London and Guangdong CCUS

Xi Liang is Professor in Sustainable Construction and Infrastructure Transition at University College London. Prior to Joining UCL, he was Senior Lecturer in Energy Finance at the University of Edinburgh. He has a PhD in Energy Policy and Finance. Prof Liang is the Secretary General and co-founder of UK-China (Guangdong) CCUS Centre, an expert panel member in climate finance for Chinese government, has been PI of climate finance and CCS related projects with the World Bank and Asian Development Bank. He is also an advisor for climate strategies for a number of firms, such as China Resources Group, China Energy Engineering Corporation, Charoen Pokphand Group and Shenzhen Energy Limited. He recently started leading the provincial CCUS planning task for Guangdong and Ningxia in China.

Richard Little, RWE

Richard Little has over 30 years of experience of power station operations and was Station Manager for both Aberthaw Power Station (the last coal station in Wales) and, more recently, Pembroke Power Station (one of the UK’s most efficient CCGTs). As Director of RWE’s Pembroke Net Zero Centre (PNZC), Richard represents, originates and coordinates RWE Group activities in South Wales, including Celtic Sea floating wind and downstream RWE decarbonisation projects such as green hydrogen production, CCS, H2 combustion for power, batteries and shared heat supply to industrial neighbours.

Kunlei Liu, University of Kentucky

Kunlei Liu is an associate professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Kentucky. He has over 30 years’ experience in directing research projects in the areas of combustion, gasification, and emissions control. His research interests include fossil fuel combustion and gasification, emission control, carbon capture from point sources and air, biomass utilization for fuels and chemicals, hydrogen production, process intensification and optimization, AI for performance monitoring and improvement, and metals recovery from end-of-life Lithium batteries and solar panels. Dr. Liu received his Bachelor of Engineering degree (1988) and his PhD (1993) in Thermoenergy engineering from Southeast University, Nanjing, China. Prior to the University of Kentucky, he has been employed by Southeast University, Western Kentucky University, Environmental Systems Corporation (ESC), and Babcock & Wilcox.

Bryony Livesey, IDC (UKRI)

Bryony Livesey leads the Industrial Decarbonisation Challenge (IDC), which forms part of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF). IDC is a £210m programme with £261m match funding from industry, designed to deploy low carbon technologies and enabling infrastructure in heavily industrialised regions of the UK. 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 has previously chaired the Independent Advisory Panel for the UKCCSRC.

Toby Lockwood, Clean Air Task Force

Toby Lockwood is Director of Technology and Markets for Carbon Capture (Europe) for Clean Air Task Force. In this role, he leads CATF’s analytical work to highlight how carbon capture can help Europe meet its climate goals. On behalf of CATF, he recently co-chaired the EU CCUS Forum’s ‘CCUS Vision’ Working Group. Prior to joining CATF, Toby worked on carbon capture for nine years with the IEA Clean Coal Centre, and also has experience in pollution control development for the lime industry. He writes regularly on CCS and other energy sector issues for industry publications.

Richard Marsh, UKCCSRC and Cardiff University

Richard Marsh is a Professor specialising in energy systems. His teaching expertise covers thermodynamics, energy studies and energy management at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. His main research interests are combustion, biomass to energy systems, fuel injection gas turbine engineering, chemical and process engineering, and waste management. Richard’s current research projects include hydrogen deployment and sustainable thermochemistry in ironmaking, including CCUS. Richard is a Director of the British Flame Research Committee and a member of the IEA’s hydrogen Technology Collaboration Programme.

Lee Mills, Natural Resources Wales

Lee Mills has been a part of the Natural Resources Wales family for five years working in regulation, project management and his current role as Senior Specialist Advisor, Industry Decarbonisation. Prior to NRW, he was Managing Director of a private limited company for twelve years and Operations Director for a civil engineering company for four years. Prior to his time in the private sector, he worked in the Environment Agency where he spent six years in water quality and water resources.

Frank Morton, U.S. Department of Energy’s National Carbon Capture Center

Frank Morton currently serves as Consulting Engineer for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Carbon Capture Center, after more than 40 years of experience as a chemical engineer in both industrial and research roles. He is responsible for bringing university, government, research and industrial organizations to the Center for collaborative technology development. Frank has evaluated projects with more than 100 organizations involved in carbon capture research and development and has established collaborative testing agreements with more than 40 organizations from eight countries. The international collaboration includes establishment of test facilities, execution of test programs and technology scale-up. Morton has extensive carbon capture technology development experience in Japan, China, India, UAE, Oman, Australia, South Korea, UK, Norway, Mexico and Canada.

Vahid Niasar, University of Manchester

Professor Vahid Niasar is the chair of subsurface engineering and porous media physics at the University of Manchester. He also serves as the deputy head of research at School of Engineering and director of the Subsurface Energy Engineering MSc program. Recently elected president-elect of the International Society of Porous Media (InterPore), his research interests include multi-phase flow, reactive transport, hydrogeology, carbon capture and storage, underground hydrogen storage, and modeling of electrochemical systems.

Julia Race, University of Strathclyde

Prior to starting her academic career, Julia worked in industry for over 20 years, latterly in the pipeline industry for 7 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. Her primary research interest is in the use of pipeline infrastructure to deliver pathways to Net Zero – primarily in the transportation of CO2 for CCS schemes and hydrogen as a replacement for oil and gas in the energy mix. Research topics have included material and specification requirements for CO2 and H2 pipelines, techniques for conducting Quantitative Risk Assessments, including pipeline failure frequency and consequence analysis, hydraulic network design and developing system flexibility and techno-economics and wider economy impacts.

David Reiner, UKCCSRC and University of Cambridge

David Reiner is Professor of Technology Policy at Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, and Assistant Director of the Energy Policy Research Group (EPRG) at Cambridge. He is one of two academic members of the CCUS Council, which is chaired by the UK Energy Minister and is on the Advisory Board of the £210m Industrial Decarbonisation Challenge. His research focuses on the political economy of climate and energy policy, particularly focusing on hard-to-abate sectors and greenhouse gas removal.

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Jen Roberts, UKCCSRC and University of Strathclyde

Dr Jen Roberts is the UKCCSRC Deputy Director and Early Career Lead. Jen also sits on the Research Committee for the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC), the Scottish Carbon Capture and Storage (SCCS) Directorate, and the Science Advisory Group for the CO2 Storage Research Facility (CSRF). She is an Associate Editor for the open access journal ES3 (Earth Science, Systems, and Society) where she is currently handling the Special Issue ‘Earth Sciences and the Race to Net Zero’.

Abby Samson, University of Sheffield

Dr Abby Samson is a Lecturer in Fuels and Combustion at The University of Sheffield. She is part of the Energy2050 team in the Mechanical Engineering Department. Her research interests and activities include analytical techniques for solvent management for PCC, DAC and the development of low-carbon and sustainable energy and fuels from biomass. Abby is an executive committee member of the IChemE Clean Energy Special Interest Group and of the Fuel and Energy Research Forum.

Kyra Sedransk Campbell, UKCCSRC and University of Sheffield

Dr Kyra Sedransk Campbell is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Sheffield. She is co-inventor of the Oxidative Ionothermal Synthesis (OIS) method, and a co-founder of Nanomox Ltd. Her research is at the interface of chemical engineering, chemistry, and materials science; she uses fundamental research, including developing new technologies and techniques, to inform important issues around sustainability. In the area of carbon capture, she has been significant in understanding the corrosion challenges that plague the existing technologies to make the infrastructure safer and less susceptible to corrosion. She is a member and the lead of the EDI working group for the ISCF TFI Future Leaders Group, on the EDI committee for the TransFire project, on the Scientific Advisory Committee of the TFI Network+, and serves as EDI lead for the CCS Network+. She is engaged in working towards improving EDI in manufacturing, as a pathway to make it more appealing, and therefore sustainable in the UK, as a career.

Karl Shepherd, Natural Resources Wales

Karl Shepherd has worked in Natural Resources Wales (NRW) and Environment Agency (EA) Wales for 16 years, on the environmental regulation of industry including engagement with Welsh Government and other regulators on the regulatory frameworks. Much of that work has involved the regulation of combustion and, more latterly, industrial decarbonisation, and how NRW can better embed sustainable management of natural resources in our regulatory engagement. Prior to NRW/EA, he worked for 12 years at British Gas R&D (and successors) on use of natural gas in industrial sectors, including energy efficiency and low emissions.

Kirstie Simpson, University of Chester

Alongside her academic role as Deputy Dean of Chester Business School at the University of Chester, Kirstie Simpson oversees a number of significantly-sized externally funded projects, totalling almost £40m. More recently Kirstie’s work has focused on the Industrial Decarbonisation Challenge and the requirement and importance of the development of skills throughout the decarbonisation supply chain. Kirstie is chair of the Skills, Learning and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) subcommittee for the HyNet project and is therefore leading the charge in the North West for a more inclusive and diverse decarbonisation workforce. Kirstie is very keen on maximising academic – stakeholder interaction; enhancing these relationships to create flexible and accessible learning opportunities for students and at the same time, helping industry develop the skills for their future workforce.

Gang Wang, Heriot-Watt University

Dr. Gang Wang is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Heriot-Watt University (HWU). He holds a PhD in Petroleum Engineering and an MSc in Reservoir Evaluation and Management from HWU, and previously worked as a Reservoir Engineer at CNPC. His main research interest lies in using numerical simulations to better understand the multiscale and multiphysics processes involved in subsurface gas storage. He has been working closely with the industry in Europe and the UK to deliver subsurface hydrogen storage at the field scale since 2020. Dr. Wang is a member of the UKCCSRC ECR Working Group and a working member of Storage Research Centre and Scottish Carbon Capture & Storage.

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.

 Video recordings (via the live webinars) of our conference sessions are available below, where we have permission to share them.

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

Posters from the poster reception on 28 March 2023 will be published below (where we have permission to share them).