A recent critical report published by the Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), entitled "The Carbon Capture Crux", has poured considerable scepticism on CCS as a viable mitigation option. The report, apparently written by two energy analysts with backgrounds in economics and finance, focuses on the under achievement of lead...

Mineral Carbonation using Mine Tailings – A Strategic Overview of Potential and Opportunities This report from IEAGHG is a review of the current status of mineral carbonation using mine tailings consisting of rock fragments that are known to be reactive with CO2. Many key industrial metals including nickel, chromium and platinum group metals (PMG) ...

Mijndert van der Spek opened this keynote by emphasising the reality of DACs.Companies like Climeworks ORCA and Carbon Engineering are gearing up the technology, the latter for use in CO2 enhanced oil recovery. Although the principle of the system is straight forward there are 10 variations mostly in the capture system.These vary considerably in te...

OPEC's proactive initiative on the development of low carbon technology solutions, as part of the transition to meeting the 2050 Net Zero goal, was highlighted during their 4th workshop on Technology, held on 23rd May. The virtual event covered a series of topics including the circular carbon economy, carbon capture, transport and storage. Attentio...

This study reviewed the risk of induced seismicity at CO2 storage sites. The phenomenon has multiple causes including waste water disposal, geothermal energy and mining. Natural seismicity is also a widespread occurrence and can detected in the same regions as industrial activities associated with induced seismicity. Consequently the detection of a...

The UK government has announcement the two projects to move forwards towards development and operation by 2025. Details on all UK clusters were presented in the CCSA's CCUS 2021 Conference last week. Here are summaries of these significant developments. Today Greg Hands, Minister State for Energy, Clean Growth and Climate Change announced that the ...

The UKCCSRC 2021 conference 'Delivering on COP26: CCS across the World' presented a highly upbeat vision of CCUS progress across the world, but especially in the UK. For the UK, several prominent contributors, notably Jon Gibbons, Professor Paul Monks BEIS (Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy) Chief Scientific Advisor and Dr Bryo...

The challenges faced by the oil and gas sector, and the associated development of CCUS, were illuminated in the fourth panel discussion of the GHGT-15 virtual conference.A North American perspective was presented by Ganesh Dasari from ExxonMobil, Scott Wehner of CaprockCarbon, Tim Wiwchar of Shell Quest and Nigel Jenvey from GafffneyCline. Tidjani ...

As the pace towards achieving a Net Zero target by 2050 picks up so does the interest in how this ambitious goal might be financed. A recent webinar, presented by the UK's Climate Change Committee, provided an insight from the finance sector on how this might be achieved. This organisation is an independent, statutory body established under the UK'...

A spotlight on the significance of CCUS development in the Asia-Pacific region was summarised in a virtual webinar hosted by Japan CCS Co Ltd & Global CCS Institute (GCCSI).The event, run on 6th October 2020, was co-hosted by Japan's New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO).Support was also received from the Japanese...

Due to COVID-19 precautions, the US Department of Energy (DOE) National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) CCUS Integrated Projects Review meeting was held as a virtual event over 17-19 August, instead of at its usual location in Pittsburgh. These events provide very informative updates on the DOE NETL funded CCUS projects. The online attendance w...

One of the challenges that faces CCS is how to transport significant volumes of compressed CO2 from point sources to sites established for large-scale storage, especially offshore. Pipelines are one solution, but their viability depends on the volume to be transported and if the CO2 comes from a variety of dispersed sources.The other option is to u...

The CO2 DataShare is a digital platform for sharing reference datasets from pioneering CO2 storage projects like Sleipner. The platform, which has now been launched, allows researchers based anywhere in the world, to download datasets from representative CO2 storage sites. Equinor, one of the World's leading companies in the advancement of CO2 stor...

Aquistore, the CCS combine capture and storage demonstration project in south-east Saskatchewan, recently summarised five years of successful research.The site receives CO2 from the adjacent coal-fired Boundary Dam power-plant. Some of this CO2 is supplied to the local oil and gas operators for enhanced oil recovery.Periodically CO2 is sent to the ...

The primary aim of this study was to explore the role of the 'clean refinery' concept and how it could contribute to the Paris Agreement's long-term objective to curb peak global greenhouse gas emissions.  Various options for refineries are available depending, not only on the complexity and degree of integration, but also on whether a refiner...

The US Government's commitment to the large-scale development of CCUS has been recently ramped up with the introduction of the Carbon Storage Assurance Facility Enterprise abbreviated to CarbonSAFE. The aim of this initiative, represented by a number of NETL research teams at this year's CCUS conference in Pittsburgh, is to develop geological stora...

During the CCUS meeting organised by NETL, a series of sessions on the development of monitoring technologies, are being held.NELT is supporting a series of R&D projects to develop and test monitoring technologies which can detect the presence of CO2 in the subsurface.US national research labs including Lawrence Livermore, Lawrence Berkely (LBN...

The annual gathering of research groups directly engaged in CCUS R&D from across the United States is being held in Pittsburgh.This meeting, organised by the US National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), ensures that US Department of Energy (DOE) projects are reviewed by that department's project managers and a wider international audience.P...

Faults are naturally occurring structures within the subsurface where there has been dislocation between adjacent rock formations.They can be a few metres to several kilometres in length and can have fracture zones of variable width.Evidence from the petroleum industry shows that they can act as seals or conduits for fluid flow.These structures can...

CaMI is a research site set up by the University of Calgary near the town of Brooks in southern Alberta.Prior to the combined Monitoring and Environmental Research network meeting organised by IEAGHG and the University of Calgary, delegates benefited from a guided tour of the site and its experimental monitoring activities.The CaMI site was establi...