CCS - a brief overview

The Start of my Blogging Journey

 Today I began to grapple with a problem: Carbon Capture & Storage (CCS) - could this be the answer to securing our climate future?

As a geology graduate I was somewhat disappointed in myself when I realised I knew so little about this topic. Speaking to friends and colleagues, I realised that this was by no means endemic to just me. Many people know broadly what CCS is, but few knew:

• If it has yet been implemented.
• The geological principles which allow it to occur.
• Any observed or modelled adverse effects.
• Its viability, cost or effectiveness.

 So, herein I will embark on a journey of discovery into the murky underground world of CCS, essentially asking; is it viable? I will be running this blog over the next few months, with a view to publishing 5-6 blogs a month. The blog will be structured around a number of different themes:

• Presenting, explaining and critiquing research in the field from scientific journals.
• Approaching what I find from the viewpoint of different stakeholders within the environmental sector, e.g private sector businesses, environmentalists, policymakers, academia and the general public.
• Regular updates on relevant media, news and scientific literature in the field.
• Regular dialogue with readers of the blog, including debate and discussion.

CCS - a brief overview

Following the ratification of the Paris Climate Agreement on October 5th, all the signatories of the agreement will be legally bound to limiting global temperature increases to below 2 degrees from November 4th.

Under a "business as usual" scenario (i.e an emissions pathway with no declining rate of CO2 emissions and no policy action) such as RCP 8.5, up to 4 degrees of global temperature increase has been modelled by 2100.

Figure 1: The red line denotes the RCP8.5 emissions pathway. This is the pathway we find ourselves on today, with no reductions in greenhouse gas emission rates occurring in future decades. Taken from IPCC 2013 WG1 Chapter 12.

 Evidently, society needs to find a solution to its carbon addiction. Most policy ideas aimed at mitigating global temperature rise involve reducing the amount of carbon that we emit. Examples include cap and trade, renewable energy schemes and electric vehicles.

 However, what if the answer to our addiction doesn't lie in reducing the amount of carbon we emit, but merely in preventing that carbon from entering our Earth's atmosphere? This is the fundamental principle of CCS - trapping CO2 emitted from power stations, cement factories and other heavy CO2 emitters and storing it beneath the Earth's surface.

 The idea really is that simple. The process is essentially the reverse of how natural gas is extracted from gas reservoirs. Once natural gas has been extracted, the pore spaces (spaces between grains within rocks) are left empty. Pumping captured CO2 back into these reservoirs allows CO2 to fill these pore spaces, preventing it from entering the atmosphere. The video below, made by the British Geological Survey, explains how the process occurs in the North Sea.

My view

 CCS seems almost to good to be true. The idea that we can take the main driver of global temperature rise and bury it in the ground is almost utopian. But what is the state of the science?

 Problems surrounding economics (wouldn't this money be better invested in renewable energy sources), safety, viability, infrastructure and ethics all come to the fore. It is these themes that I will explore over the coming months as I look to answer the question "Is Carbon Capture and Storage key to securing our climate future?".

Until next time.

Lewis