The origin of the word 'sandwich' for an item of food may have originated from a story about John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich. It is said that in approximately1762, he asked for meat to be served between slices of bread to avoid interrupting a gambling game. This story may have been rumour but soon people are reputed to have started ordering ...
Coming straight on the heels of the ratification of the Paris Agreement COP22 in Marrakech starts today. the COP22 will focus on action items in order to achieve the priorities of The Paris Agreement, especially related to adaptation, transparency, technology transfer, mitigation, capacity building and loss and damages. At yesterday's opening...
The IEA Greenhouse gas R&D programme is formed under an agreement framed by the International Energy Agency in Paris. There are nearly 40 such agreements, which used to be called Implementing Agreements. The term Implementing Agreement caused a lot of confusion and what it stood for was difficult to communicate especially to non-native En...
With the UK the latest country to signal its intent to phase out petrol and diesel cars, it seems we can see the end of the much-loved internal combustion engine (ICE). First invented back in the early 1800's the ICE has certainly made its mark on society and we remain hooked on our cars. I am not sure myself that an electric car appeals to m...
Suzanne has worked as an Event Manager for more than 20 years, creating and delivering high profile events for companies across the globe. These companies include : Intel, Vodafone, Cable & Wireless, John Lewis Partnership and Chase de Vere Financial Services Whilst living in the Netherlands for 4 years she worked as the Senior Conference...
There was much news coverage of the G20 meeting and the positions that the US President was likely to take. The end result was a media focus on climate change differences, noting the G20 Declaration allowed the US to state its leaving of the Paris Agreement but also emphasised the robust support by the 19 other countries for the Paris Agreeme...
The latest news that the authority that governs the Kemper county CCS project will not support any more activities on the lignite fired gasification and CCS plant is extremely disappointing. Unlike projects like ROAD, Kemper has been built and so calling a halt at this stage is a shame. The Kemper project has had its problems mostly with new ...
Over recent decades, it has become apparent that there is no one single technological solution to solve the problem of reducing anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions; a portfolio of low-carbon energy technologies needs to be deployed in parallel. Most climate scenarios targeting 2°C or well below 2°C confirm that carbon capture and storage (CCS) ...
It seems the ROAD project in the Netherlands has come to the end of its road. It is a shame that any CCS project does not proceed and particularly one in Europe, but ROAD has had the feeling of a dead man walking for a long time now. Its latest restructuring meant it only had a small offshore injection lifetime of some 3 years. When I first heard t...
Christine Figueres, who must be given great credit for delivering the Paris Agreement has launched a new initiative – Mission 2020. Mission 2020 is not a new NASA moon shot, but is a new initiative to bring "new urgency" to the "global climate conversation". Inherent in Mission 2020 is a call to begin "rapidly declining" global greenhouse gas emiss...
I went to Portland Harbour to see the results of the harbour trials of the UK Energy Technologies Institute funded marine Monitoring Measurement and Verification (MMV) system which has been developed for CO2 storage site surveillance. This has a strong emphasis on the utilisation of AUVs (autonomous underwater vehicles – now famous from "Boaty McBo...
Globally, the pulp and paper (P&P) industry is the fifth largest industrial source of CO2 emissions. Recently, the Paris Agreement has highlighted the target of achieving below 1.5oC temperature rise. In order to achieve this goal, bio-CCS has an important role to play to achieve this target. In a pulp mill, the CO2 emissions arise mainly from...
It is pleasing to see that Ladybird Books (which publishes mass-market children's books) has published a title on Climate Change which has been co-authored by HRH the Prince of Wales. The book, Climate Change, provides a short-format guide to the key scientific facts central to climate change. It explains the history, dangers and challenges o...
Review of CO2 storage in basalts – new technical review from IEAGHG on the potential of using basalts and other magnesium rich rocks to store CO2. Conventional CO2 storage relies on injection into a reservoir in sedimentary rock which has an impermeable caprock. It is also possible to trap CO2 in igneous rock formations with high magnesium, iron a...
I like to watch the weather in a morning on BBC news to start the day. These days we regularly get images of the flow of the jet stream and I have been amazed by how much it varies, wobbling around the upper region of the globe. This morning we were told that the jet stream was bringing high winds to the UK and planes coming from the USA will be s...
Andy Boston from the Energy Research Partnership in the UK has written a great article that presses on an issue that has concerned me for some time, the use of the levelised costs of electricity (LCOE) to compare low carbon technologies. In his article "the levelised cost of fruit" see http://erpuk.org/levelised-cost-fruit/ he dismisses the use of ...
A new report entitled The Arctic Resilience Report (see https://www.sei-international.org/publications?pid=3047) indicates that temperatures in the Arctic are currently about 200C above what would be expected for the time of year and that sea ice is at the lowest extent ever recorded for the time of year. One concern highlighted by the report is t...
COP-22 got underway in Marrakesh in unseasonable heavy rain. Several thousand delegates are gathering at the tented city that is the conference centre for the work to start developing the implementation details of the Paris Agreement, in terms of frameworks, processes and mechanisms. Negotiations commenced under SBSTA on the Technology Framework in...
The Climate Technology Centre and Network (CTCN) set up in 2003 is the implementing arm of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Technology Mechanism. The CTCN, promotes the accelerated development and transfer of climate technologies for energy-efficient, low-carbon and climate-resilient development. On November 4th 2016 the CT...
During the CSLF week of meetings in Tokyo, the Japanese hosts RITE and JCCS Company arranged for a day visit to the Tomakomai project on the northern island of Hokkaido. This project is capturing CO2 from a gas stream from the hydrogen production unit at the Tomakomai refinery using a unique two-stage pressure swing absorption system, and inj...
