Carbon capture and storage, or CCS, is an important new geoengineering solution to climate change.
The idea is simple: that we capture co2 from large point sources, like power stations, cement factories and
oil refineries and store it, or dispose of it deep underground. This stops the co2 from getting into
the atmosphere, but we want to know that CCS works and most of all that it's safe. CCS could be an
industry the size of present-day North Sea oil within a few decades. It's simply the reverse of
the oil and gas business. Putting climate change in co2 gas back in the ground after fossil fuels have
been burnt. This new technology is one of the ways that Britain could reduce its emissions as well
as help other big co2 producers reduce theirs.
Point sources would be connected in clusters to pipelines, that would take co2 across country and offshore to wells where it can be injected
into former oil or gas fields, or deep aquifers. The argument is that if the underground storage
structure is good enough, the gas will stay there for millions of years, just as natural gas does.
Scientists have already shown, at a small scale, that they can capture, transport and store co2.
In Britain we're lucky in being close to one of the largest areas of potential storage for co2 in Europe.
The rocks under the North Sea could absorb about 22 billion tonnes of co2
which is 180 years of the UK's 20 largest point sources.
This is a really hefty reduction in Britain's emissions.
We're very confident that co2 won't leak. One of the reasons why is that we know a lot about natural gas,
or methane, in the North Sea.
We've been extracting natural gas from the North Sea for many years in this country and as geologists we know that
that methane or natural gas has been in those structures for literally millions of years, it's actually stayed put for millions of years.
So, if we engineer the structures in which we hope to store our carbon dioxide to the same level
there's no reason why they should leak at all, the co2 should stay down there for millions of years.
We're also very confident from the science because, for example, we've been injecting co2 for a long time.
There are various places in the world where co2 is successfully injected into rocks.
For example in the United States, co2 is injected for enhanced oil recovery in oil fields where it flushes the oil,
the last remaining oil out of fields and also in the Sleipner field in the North Sea
we've been injecting co2 for well over 10 years, very successfully.
FInally, we feel that we can image and we can actually see the co2 collecting in reservoirs using very
sophisticated seismic techniques, we can actually see the layers of co2 as they collect.
So overall, science gives us a lot of confidence that our containers, the structures
where we hope to store co2 will not leak.
The UK is taking a lead in CCS worldwide, both in terms of British Government support for CCS, but also because British scientists are exporting
knowledge and expertise to big emitters in the developing world, like China and India.
Large scale CCS can't happen until we know that it's viable, and that the co2 won't escape.
Would money spent on CCS be better spent on renewable energy like wind farms?
Is CCS a big opportunity for the UK? These are reasonable questions to ask. To answer them
scientists are working around the world to find out whether CCS is a viable long-term option.