Studies, Reports & Working Papers

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is a crucial technology to enable the decarbonisation of fossil fuel electricity generation. The UK has considerable potential for geological storage of CO2 under the North Sea and extensive offshore industry experience that could be applied. While initial storage is likely to be undertaken in depleted oil and gas fields, much larger saline aquifer formations are estimated to have sufficient capacity to securely contain 100 years of current UK fossil fuel power plant CO2 emissions.

The CO2 Aquifer Storage Site Evaluation and Monitoring (CASSEM) project brings together the experience and different working practices of utilities, offshore operators, engineering contractors, and academic researchers to build collective understanding and develop expertise. CASSEM produced both new scientific knowledge and detailed insight into the CCS industry, developing best-value methods for the evaluation of saline aquifer formations for CO2 storage. Alongside work to assess the storage potential of two saline aquifer formations in close proximity to large coal power plant, CASSEM applied a novel Features, Events and Processes method to explore perceptions of risk in the work undertaken. This identified areas of industry and research community uncertainty and unfamiliarity to enable targeted investment of resource to reduce overall project risk. An openly accessible and flexible full chain (CO2 capture, transport and storage) costing model was developed allowing the CCS community to assess and explore overall costs. CASSEM's work also included the first use of citizen panels in the regions investigated for storage to assess public perception and educate the general public about CCS.

CASSEM now plans to apply and further develop the methodologies established to test the viability of using a large offshore saline aquifer to store CO2 from multiple sources, leading to the proving of such a store by test injection of CO2.

This toolkit has been produced by the Scottish Carbon Capture and Storage on behalf of the Scottish Government and sponsored by the Global CCS Institute. It guides users through a test regulatory exercise that provides a quick, low-cost, low-risk approach to testing regional and national legislation and regulatory systems for CCS projects, and turning recommendations into reality.

Implementing this toolkit will assist you, government, regulators, and industry to work quickly together to map, test and understand your national regulatory process for carbon capture and storage projects.

These are key findings of the report, ‘Progressing Scotland’s CO2 storage opportunities’, which was unveiled at a media launch hosted by Scottish Carbon Capture and Storage {SCCS} and the Scottish Energy Minister Jim Mather MSP.

Detailed research calculates that rock, known as the Captain Sandstone, buried more than half a mile beneath the Moray Firth could store at least 15 years, and potentially a century’s worth of CO2 output from Scotland’s power industry. Professor Eric Mackay from SCCS said "This is an exciting and landmark moment in the development of carbon capture and storage. The Captain Sandstone is just one of many rock formations filled with salt water in the central and northern North Sea. We have shown that this is a feasible site that could store massive amounts of CO2, helping the UK meet its targets for carbon emissions reduction. The future potential for this and other areas of the North Sea is immense."

The SCCS research, funded by Scottish Government and a group of businesses within the energy sector, also showed that carbon capture and storage could create 13,000 jobs in Scotland by 2020, and another 14,000 elsewhere in the UK, spread across a wide range of skills. This would increase in subsequent years. Properly developed, the UK’s share of worldwide carbon capture and storage business could be worth more than £10 billion a year by around 2025.

The conclusions show that Scotland has an extremely large CO2 storage resource. This is overwhelmingly in offshore saline aquifers (deeply buried porous sandstones filled with salt water) together with a few specific depleted hydrocarbon fields. The resource can easily accommodate the industrial CO2 emissions from Scotland for the next 200 years. There is very likely to be sufficient storage to allow import of CO2 from NE England, this equating to over 25% of future UK large industry and power CO2 output. Preliminary indications are that Scotland’s offshore CO2 storage capacity is very important on a European scale, comparable with that of offshore Norway, and greater than Netherlands, Denmark and Germany combined.