- Project confirms there are no major technical hurdles to storing industrial scale CO2 offshore in the UK with sites able to service mainland Europe as well as the UK
- 12 month project was carried out by Pale Blue Dot Energy, Axis Well Technology and Costain with 2.5m of funding provided by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC)
Aberdeen-based consultancy Pale Blue Dot Energy supported by Axis Well Technology and Costain delivered a project which identified the next phase of sites deep under the seabed in UK waters to store CO2 emissions from coal and gas power stations and heavy industry plants. The 12 month project was delivered by the ETI and funded with up to 2.5m from DECC. It progressed the appraisal of five selected storage sites towards readiness for Final Investment Decisions, de-risking these stores for potential future storage developers. This project identified 20 specific CO2storage sites (from a potential 579 sites) which together represent the tip of a very large strategic national CO2storage resource potential,estimated to be around 78GT (78,000 million tonnes). The top 15% of this potential storage capacity would last the UK around 100 years. Five of these sites were then selected for further detailed analysis given their potential contribution to mobilise commercial-scale carbon, capture and storage (CCS) projects for power and industrial use in the UK. Outline storage development plans and budgets were prepared for each. Under the terms of the DECC funding package, the ETI is publishing on its website the detailed reports from the project and providing access to the sub-surface geological models. The project has built on data from CO2Stored - the UKs CO2storage atlas - a database which was created from the ETIs UK Storage Appraisal Project. This is now publically available and being further developed by The Crown Estate and the British Geological Survey. Information on CO2Stored is available at www.co2stored.co.uk |