The IEAGHG CCS summer school aims to provide students from diverse academic backgrounds with a broad understanding of the issues surrounding CCS and encourage their active participation in this area.

Introduction

The summer school lasts for one week and includes presentations and discussion groups led by international experts in the field of CCS. In addition to the discussion programme, the students are divided into teams to undertake short research activities on issues of importance within the CCS area, with a presentation to their peers at the end of the week.Time is also allocated for networking and for informal discussions with the assembled experts.

Students leaving at the end of the week will have developed a network of contacts in the field of CCS and will have gained a broad overview of the issues surrounding technology development and implementation in CCS.

Background

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is now generally seen as a major contributor to reducing emissions of CO₂ into the atmosphere. In particular global implementation of CCS could allow large scale reductions of CO₂ emissions to be achieved before the end of the next century. Presently, the potential of CCS is being explored in more than 100 projects around the world and international conferences serve as platforms to exchange the results from these activities amongst experts.

For wide scale deployment however, it is necessary to broaden the knowledge base in industrialised and developing countries, particularly at an academic level. Training courses or summer schools are one way of contributing to this, by accelerating and supporting the dissemination of knowledge on the potential for CCS to students around the world.

The Programme

The summer school programme covers every aspect of CCS and aims to present the most recent information available in each field. The topics covered include:

• Sources of CO₂
• Capture of CO₂
• Transport of CO₂
• Underground geological storage
• Mineral carbonation and industrial uses of CO₂
• Safety
• Costs and economic potential of CCS
• Regulatory regimes
• Implications of CCS for GHG inventories and accounting

Target Students

The target group for the summer school is young scientists, e.g. PhD students and Post Docs with a background in engineering, geo-technologies, socio-economics. Generally some 60 students from both developed and developing countries will participate in each programme.

Experts

Over 20 experts from industry and research attend the summer school for each programme.

The experts are in attendance throughout the week of the summer school. They are there to lead discussion in their areas of expertise and are also available for leading smaller discussion groups on the project topics and other topics of interest to the students – this is a tremendous opportunity to gain from the experience of the assembled experts.

Summer School 2009

Summer School 2010

Summer School 2011

Summer School 2012

Details of the next summer school

Summer School 2013