Transport of CO2 for carbon capture and storage in the UK

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) has been receiving increasing recognition as a short to medium term measure for closing the energy gap whilst a portfolio of carbon neutral technologies is developed to provide power for the UK. This has been accompanied by an increasing political will and a developing policy framework to achieve it. If the UK is serious in its intentions, the necessary economic drivers will also be put in place. It remains to identify and resolve the technical issues that apply peculiarly to the UK. In recent years the capture technology has developed to the point of viability and storage has been accepted to be safe and ecologically sound, but relatively little work has been carried out on CO2 transport. In the US naturally occurring CO 2 is routinely transported considerable distances overland through mostly sparsely populated regions for the purpose of enhanced oil recovery. There is also some limited transport of anthropogenic CO2. In the UK a number of suitable offshore CO2 sinks have been identified in the North and Irish Seas for EOR or simply for storage. It has been commonly assumed that the transport of CO2 from UK sources to offshore sinks is straightforward, and may even be able to make widespread use of existing infrastructure. However, there are significant differences between the US experience and the UK transport requirements. The UK will be dealing with anthropogenic CO2, mostly from power plant, which will impose constraints on the hydraulics that have not yet been fully explored. Considerable proportions of the transport system will be subsea, of which there is as yet virtually no experience. There are questions as to the suitability of much of the existing infrastructure and the desirability of using it. There is little experience with multi-source transport systems through densely populated regions. This paper will address some of the technical issues that need to be considered for the development of a UK CO2 transport infrastructure, in the post demonstration phase of carbon capture and storage, capable of mitigating the emission of green house gases whilst allowing the continued use of fossil fuels.