Canada UK Energy Summit

This bilateral event was held on 13 March at the grand venue of One Whitehall Place in London. The focus was on accelerating a clean energy transition, in particular by industrial decarbonisation with CCUS and hydrogen, with some other low-carbon technologies covered also. Over 150 attendees from Canada and the UK attended, mostly from industry, with a substantial trade delegation from Canada, and some academic "energy influencers". Two keynotes were given, one by The Honourable Ralph Goodale, High Commissioner for Canada in the UK. The other was from Laszlo Varro from Shell, describing their two future scenarios of Sky 2050 and Archipelago (there is no longer a business-as-usual scenario). There was a fireside chat with Alex Milward, Director of CCUS at UK DESNZ. We heard talks and discussion panels on CCS, hydrogen and sustainable fuels, on encouraging more UK-Canada collaboration, on advancing CCUS projects in both countries, and on encouraging innovation and the innovation ecosystem.

Common themes throughout the afternoon were collaboration and innovation, support of local communities, and the need for scaling up and skilling up the workforce. There was the appropriate promotion of our GHGT-17 conference in Calgary by Heather Stephens of Emissions Reduction Alberta and myself. This conference provides a powerful international dimension to the innovation ecosystem in each country, and, as we know, produces new collaborations and more innovation. With a ten-year record of abstracts submitted from around the world and the high level of CCS activity in Canada, this could become the largest GHGT conference yet.

We were reminded that the clean energy transition is a marathon, not a sprint, and a new term was used "the moose in the room" to describe the aggressive 2030 targets. Being an in-person event, there were great conversations in the margins, for example with PTRC, the International CCS Knowledge Centre, CMC, the British Consulate in Calgary, BP, Shell, Hatch and others.

The UK and Canada are both long-standing members of the IEAGHG. Canada has a strong relationship with the IEAGHG and will be hosting this year's GHGT-17 conference later this year in Calgary. Canada's relationship with the IEAGHG started in the 1990s when the Weyburn CCS project was partly initiated by the IEAGHG, hence its name "IEAGHG Weyburn-Midale CO₂ Monitoring and Storage Project". The IEAGHG continues our involvement with our Summer School being regularly hosted by the International CCS Knowledge Centre in Regina.

Thank you to the Canada Europe Roundtable for Business and The Energy Roundtable for organising an interesting event followed by a reception at the Canadian High Commission.

These were followed by a smaller round-table dinner hosted by the International CCS Knowledge Centre, Emissions Reduction Alberta and CCSA, where discussions continued. Thank you to all these hosts for the great collaboration with the IEAGHG.