Scotland targets lead role in carbon storage

Edinburgh, Scotland - Industrial carbon dioxide (CO2) produced in the UK during the next 200 years can be stored securely beneath the Scottish area of the Northern and Central North Sea, according to a major joint study. The one-year project by the Scottish Centre for Carbon Storage (SCCS), the Scottish Government and a steering committee representing a broad range of industry partners, is the most comprehensive CO2 source-to-store study ever performed in the UK.

SCCS is a collaboration between the University of Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt University with the British Geological Survey (BGS). Industry backers included: Accenture, BG Group plc, CO2DeepStore Ltd, Doosan Babcock Energy Ltd, Hydrogen Energy International Ltd, INEOS Manufacturing Scotland Ltd, Marathon Oil Corp.,  National Grid, Nexen Petroleum UK Ltd, RWE npower, Scottish and Southern Energy, ScottishPower and Wood Mackenzie.

Entitled 'Opportunities for CO2 Storage Around Scotland', the study presents the first site-by-site assessment of carbon dioxide storage sites, which have the capacity to store at least a range of 4,600 to 46,000 million tonnes of CO2 in rocks buried deep beneath the Scottish waters of the North Sea.

The study identifies the largest potential carbon dioxide storage sites in the Scottish North Sea to date, in multiple saline aquifers (deeply buried porous sandstones filled with salt water) and in depleted oil and gas fields, which are overlain by impermeable rock Œseals¹ that prevent CO2 leakage out of the reservoir.

Preliminary estimates also suggest that Scotland's offshore CO2 storage capacity is extremely important on a European scale: comparable with that of Norway, and much greater than Netherlands, Denmark and Germany combined.

With EU leaders¹ requests for 12 demonstration plants of carbon capture and storage (CCS) on full-size power plants to be operating by 2015, more detailed investigations will now take place to calculate how much storage the Scottish North Sea saline aquifers could provide to reduce CO2 emissions from the rest of Europe.

Stuart Haszeldine, professor of sedimentary geology at the University of Edinburgh, said: "Output of CO2 is now widely established as one of the chief contributors to climate change and ocean acidification. Carbon dioxide capture and geological storage has the potential to play a critical role in rapidly reducing the worst effects. The information gathered in this study tells us where the opportunities and challenges are with CO2 storage. Now we have to take the first steps on the path to emission reductions."

To undertake the study, SCCS first identified the largest sources of CO2 in Scotland and northern England, both now and up until 2040, (predominately from electrical power generation and industrial plants) then assessed the volume of their likely future emissions that could be captured. To transport the CO2 from sources to stores, the study has suggested options for pipeline routes, which will feed from power plants to offshore hubs, where CO2 can be distributed to multiple storage sites in the vicinity. These hubs can also bring in CO2 from England or Europe.

Potential stores were screened and the best 10 saline aquifers and 29 oil and gas fields beneath the Scottish waters of the North Sea, which have the potential to permanently store CO2 generated in Scotland for the next 200 years or more, were shortlisted. The study found that saline aquifers represent the major CO2 storage potential and proposed that there is now a need for detailed mapping and evaluation of specific aquifers.