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John Gale

Paris Agreement Enters into Force.

The Paris Agreement has now entered into force. To date 74 countries have joined the agreement, 55 were needed. These countries represent 58.83% of global greenhouse emissions, breaking the required 55% threshold. That was the easy bit, now the hard work starts, there a big hill to climb to get to below 2 degree C temperature rise.
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John Gale

Climate Scientists say 1.5C is inevitable.

 In a recently published paper called "The Truth about Climate Change", a group of climate scientists tell us that, "By 2015, the global temperature had risen by 1°C above pre-industrial levels, that it is certain to rise another half a degree by 2030 and will continue to rise to 2°C by 2050 unless drastic action is taken to reduce emissions" ...
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John Gale

Ratification of Paris Agreement moves closer.

 According to the UNFCCC as of today (23rd September 2016) 62 countries representing 49.3% of global CO2 emissions have now ratified the Paris Agreement. To enter into force the agreement needs 50 countries representing 55% of global emissions to sign. So milestone one has been passed and milestone 2 is close to being achieved. At a single eve...
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John Gale

Keeping up Momentum on HFC reduction.

 The Montreal Protocol is expected in October 2016 to agree an amendment to phase down HFC emissions. Ahead of that decision the US Government has this week hosted a meeting with over 100 delegates who called for securing an ambitious amendment with an "early freeze date". The freeze date is the year when countries stop increasing the producti...
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John Gale

China and USA Ratify Paris Agreement

 At the G20 meeting in Japan China and the USA have both announced their intention to ratify the Paris Agreement. This means that he two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases have committed themselves to the principle of moving to a temperature target of below 2 degrees centigrade. Both countries have now formally lodged their instruments of ra...
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John Gale

Global Warming started in 1830’s

 New research led by Australian scientists, and recently published in the journal Nature suggests human impacts had begun to change the climate as back as the 1830's, earlier than previously expected. Their conclusions were based on natural records of climate variation in the world's oceans and continents, including those found in corals, ice ...
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Jasmin Kemper

Carbon Capture and Storage Faraday Discussion

 The Faraday Discussion on Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) took place 18-20th July in Sheffield, UK. This unique meeting format (more on this in a moment) was organised by the Faraday Division of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) and supported by the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE). The scientific committee consisted of Paul Fen...
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John Gale

If we didn’t know already, 2015 was the hottest year on record.

 The 2015 State of the Climate report has recently been published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. The report confirmed that 2015 surpassed 2014 as the warmest year since at least the mid-to-late 19th century. The record heat resulted from the combined influence of long-term global warming and one of the strongest El Niñ...
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Tim Dixon

Millionth tonne captured at Boundary Dam during IEAGHG International Summer School

Congratulations to SaskPower for capturing their millionth tonne of CO2 yesterday, during the IEAGHG International CCS Summer School visit. Fifty students from over 17 countries visited SaskPower's Boundary Dam project yesterday, coinciding with the capture of their millionth tonne. The students had been hearing from SaskPower about many aspects of...
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John Gale

A triumph for Science and Policy

Whilst we have been familiar with articles telling us that global surface temperatures are increasing month on month, water resources are increasingly stressed and that glaciers and ice sheets around the world are melting quickly at least there is some good news out there. A new study published in the Journal Science tells us that the Antarctic ozo...
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John Gale

That’s it then we are stuck with 400ppm

 According to a new study recently reported in the journal Nature, atmospheric concentrations of CO2 will stay permanently above 400 parts per million (ppm) this year due to El Nino. The follow on bad news is that the researchers do not expect that it will likely drop below 400ppm "within our lifetimes," Commenting on the research presented in...
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James Craig

Risk Management Network and Environment Research Network Combined Meeting Concludes

 The summary report of the Risk Management Network and Environmental Research Network Combined meeting held in September 2015 has now been published. This meeting was held at the UK's National Oceanography Centre (NOC), in Southampton and was attended by 62 delegates from 11 countries. The three day meeting included themes on risk assessment m...
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John Gale

Hitting new highs and lows and raised concerns

 The US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) provides up to date data on the atmospheric concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere. The NOAA data set shows a steadily increasing concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. In June 2016 NOAA reported that in May 2016 they recorded the biggest year-over-year jump in atmospheric ...
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Tim Dixon

Public Sharing of Information on Progressing Development of the UK’s Strategic Carbon Dioxide Storage Resource

 There was an excellent webinar today hosted by the Global CCS Institute on work from the UK's Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) to develop UK storage resource. The report was produced by a consortium led by Aberdeen-based consultancy Pale Blue Dot Energy working with Axis Well Technology and Costain. It follows a 12 month project commission...
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Tim Dixon

Review of project permits under the London Protocol – An assessment of the proposed P18-4 CO2 storage site

 The London Convention and Protocol promotes the protection of the marine environment by prohibiting the dumping of wastes and other matter into the sea. Under the Protocol all dumping is prohibited, with the exception of a limited number of selected substances. In 2007, an amendment entered into force which permitted CO2 streams for geologica...
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James Craig

Operational flexibility of CO2 transport and storage

 One of the advantages of CCS as a means of CO2 abatement is that several industrial processes, as well as fossil fuel power generation, can be captured and connected to a pipeline network. Multiple sources of CO2 can then be transported to suitable geological reservoirs and injected to ensure secure storage. Many industrial operations, and po...
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Tim Dixon

New report - Review of GHG Accounting Rules for CCS

IEAGHG has jsut published a new techncial review - 2016-TR3, Review of GHG Accounting Rules for CCS. The review was completed by Carbon Counts. A range of greenhouse gas (GHG) monitoring and accounting protocols and guidelines currently exist for carbon capture and storage (CCS) activities, and various activities continue in this area. This report ...
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John Gale

Aerosols who needs them and back to square 1 for the climate modellers?

 I have read a fascinating article in Nature about the ability of trees to seed clouds. All the research I have seen to date suggests that if we act to reduce air pollution by scrubbing sulphur dioxide from power plants then we reduce the albedo effect of clouds and the earth heats up. This has in part been blamed for increasing temperatures i...
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Jasmin Kemper

Can CO2 capture and storage unlock ‘unburnable carbon’?

 'Unburnable carbon' refers to fossil fuel reserves that cannot be used and the resulting greenhouse gases emitted if the world has a limited 'carbon budget'. This situation leads to the question: what role does technology have in addressing these concepts and concerns related to them? The International Energy Agency (IEA) and the Intergovernm...
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John Gale

A New Plastics Economy?

As we all know plastics are a man-made creation which like steel and cement are the building blocks of our current society. However plastics particularly packing is used only once then discarded causing significant environmental problems. The adverse impacts of discarded plastic in the oceans is well documented. Plastic manufacture uses 6% of globa...
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