Geological Carbon Storage:
Meeting the Global Challenge
Fossil fuels will continue to constitute a significant part of the energy mix, nationally and globally, for several decades at least. Urgent action is required to avoid dangerous climate change as a result of the CO2 released when they are burnt. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has the potential to achieve this objective, if implemented at sufficient scale, by capturing the CO2 and trapping it safely underground.
This was the third in a series of international conferences on CCS held jointly by the Geological Society of London and AAPG Europe. It examined the challenges of implementing CCS at large scale from a global perspective, bringing together academic, industry and government speakers from Europe, North America and Australia to share and discuss the latest research findings and field experience.
Key questions included:
- What is the scale of the global challenge, and where is the CO2 storage capacity to meet this challenge?
- What development and storage potential is offered by novel geological settings and trapping mechanisms for geological storage of carbon, including migration assisted trapping in unconstrained formations?
- What are the principal constraints on large scale storage of CO2?
- How can migration and leakage be measured and monitored at commercial scale?
- How can the geoscience of CCS inform public engagement and confidence-building, and political decision-making?
The conference concluded with a panel discussion on policy implications, at which the conference delegates will be joined by an invited audience of those from government, industry, regulators, NGOs and others involved in planning and policy-making.
Speakers included:
- Andy Chadwick (BGS)
- Rick Chalaturnyk (University of Alberta)
- Florian Doster (Herriot-Watt University)
- Ian Duncan (Gulf Coast Carbon Center)
- Andrew Garnett (University of Queensland)
- Sarah Gasda (University of Bergen)
- Stuart Gilfillan (University of Edinburgh)
- Herbert Huppert (University of Cambridge)
- Marc Hesse (University of Texas)
- Charles Jenkins (CO2CRC)
- Mike Kendall (University of Bristol)
- Sam Krevor (Imperial College London)
- Bryan Lovell (University of Cambridge)
- Jerome Neufeld (University of Cambridge)
- Chris MacMinn (University of Oxford)
- Jim Underschultz (University of Queensland)