27 October 2014: The Greenhouse Gas R&D Programme of the International Energy Agency (IEA) hosted the 12th Greenhouse Gas Control Technologies Conference (GHGT-12), holding a series of technical discussions, an exhibition, poster session and plenaries to advance and share knowledge of technologies that do or can potentially allow the use of fossil fuels without further contributing to climate change.

The opening plenary of the conference highlighted the past decade’s progress toward achieving efficient and cost-effective carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS). A number of sessions throughout the week presented case studies of CCS in practice, including the Illinois Basin – Decatur Project (US), where it is reported that carbon dioxide (CO2) is being contained effectively in the Mt. Simon Formation, and the Jingbian CCS Project in China, which has undergone its second year of injections.

Participants also learned about the world’s first large-scale, commercial CCS project at a coal-fired power plant, which opened 2 October 2014 in Saskatchewan, Canada. This plant was also among several examples examined through a plenary focusing on amine scrubbing for commercial CCS power plants. Other plenaries throughout the week looked at such topics as the value of social science research for CCS deployment and enhanced oil recovery (EOR).

A session on legal and regulatory aspects of deploying CCS covered the EU CCS Directive and the US EPA Class VI requirements. With projects permitted under both systems, it appeared that the hurdles were not insurmountable, and a project developer in the EU even commented that though seemingly complex at first, the EU requirements were surprisingly straightforward.

During the conference, the Greenman Award was also presented. Hallvard Svendsen of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) was announced the winner for his contributions to the advancement of CCS technologies and increasing the understanding of GHG emission mitigation.

GHGT-12 was held in Austin, Texas, US from 6-9 October 2014. GHGT-13 will be hosted in Lausanne, Switzerland, on 14-18 November 2014. [IEAGHG Blog] [Conference Website]