Current Projects

EASAC study on carbon capture and storage

Summary

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) forms a key component of national, European and world-wide strategies to tackle climate change. However, experience of commercial scale application of CCS is very limited, and significant challenges remain to minimise cost and efficiency penalties, and to demonstrate safe, long-term storage of CO₂.

This study will enable the European science academies to advise policy makers on the realism of current plans through a collaborative examination of the scientific and technical challenges that need to be overcome in order to realise the anticipated contribution of CCS to mitigating climate change.

Background

The European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC: www.easac.eu) was established in 2001 to enable European policy makers to access scientific advice from Europe’s best scientists as represented by the academies’ members. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has been identified by EASAC’s energy programme as a key element of Europe’s energy strategy on which scientific advice from the academies would be timely.

CCS is an approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions which involves the trapping of CO₂ generated by large point sources before it is released, its transport to a storage facility, and its long-term storage underground. Studies by the IPCC, the International Energy Agency and the Major Economies Forum point to the need for rapid deployment of CCS if abatement goals for greenhouse gases are to be met: 100 CCS projects are anticipated to be deployed by 2020, and 3400 by 2050 (at a cost of 2.5-3 trillion US$). While the developed world may be expected to take a lead in developing and deploying CCS, developing countries will also need to adopt it at a large scale.

Study objectives

The EASAC study will:

·        Consider how the cost and efficiency penalties of CO₂ capture can be substantially reduced through advanced technologies and new CCS pathways, and consequently what further research, development and demonstration is needed.

·        Evaluate the levels of confidence in the long-term storage of CO₂ that can realistically be achieved and how they can be demonstrated to the satisfaction of regulators and the public. Hence, identify monitoring requirements and what further developments are needed in the science to support decision making processes and to inform public opinion.

·        Consider the relative role of proposed alternative approaches to carbon sequestration such as ‘biochar’.

·        Drawing together findings in the three previous areas, take a view on the realism of current European planning assumptions on the contribution of CCS to 2050.

The resulting advice will be presented to the European Commission and Parliament, and through the EASAC member academies, to policy makers in the EU member states, Switzerland and Norway.

Approach

A working group, chaired by Professor Herbert Huppert of Cambridge University, has been established to undertake the study. Its members, as listed below, are experts in the range of science and technology relevant to CCS.

It is planned that the working group will meet four times, at approximately two-monthly intervals, commencing in October 2011. Advice will be presented to the European Commission and Parliament in autumn 2012.

Concentrating Solar Power

A study is currently being carried out to evaluate the scientific and technical issues associated with concentrating solar power (CSP). This is a technology which has to date had relatively little application in Europe, but which is developing very quickly and has the potential to make a major contribution to electricity supplies in the future. Aims of the study are to:

1.      Review the current status of CSP technologies and identify the technological developments and R&D needed to achieve reliable operation and cost competitiveness with fossil fuelled electricity generation.

2.      Consider how issues associated with the intermittent nature of CSP for electricity generation due to the daily pattern of insolation and the potential for cloudy days can best be addressed.

3.      Identify the environmental impacts and infrastructure requirements of CSP, and comment on the significance of these in relation to other options for electricity supply.

4.      Develop a view of the potential contribution that CSP located in Europe and the MENA region could make to the energy mix of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa by 2020 and 2050. 

The study is due to be completed in the autumn of 2011.