Projections of energy usage generally agree that the world will be heavily reliant on fossil fuels well into the second half of the 21st Century. Until our energy demands can be met by alternative sources, geological storage of CO2 in depleted petroleum reservoirs and deep saline aquifers is widely acknowledged to offer one of the most promising and practical means to reduce CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning power stations in the developed world and more importantly in rapidly developing nations such as China and India. Estimated reductions in CO2 emission from carbon capture and storage from fossil fuel generating stations can be as high as 90%. The UK Government has an ambitious target to reduce CO2 emissions by 80% by 2050, and Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is expected to play a major role to meet this target. Although CO2 has been injected into petroleum reservoirs for over 50 years to improve oil recovery, there are still many uncertainties that must be addressed before governments will commit to the level of CCS that is needed to have a significant impact on CO2 emissions. A large amount of research has been initiated in many countries to address these uncertainties. In addition, several CO2 storage pilot studies have been completed or are in progress both on- and off-shore as well as within depleted petroleum reservoirs and saline aquifers. This project addresses the gaps in our current knowledge in this field through an integrated laboratory and numerical modelling approach. The main objectives of the project can be summarised as:- - to develop methodologies to optimise CO2 injection well placement and control strategies accounting for uncertainties and influence on neighbouring licenses. - to establish the effects of in situ pressure and temperature conditions on caprock fracture closure and fault reactivation through laboratory and numerical investigations. - to investigate and improve our understanding of the in situ wellbore cement/rock and cement caprock behaviour in order to assess well integrity. - to develop novel wellbore and caprock leakage mitigation and remediation technologies utilising sealants and induced mineral precipitation processes.

The OBJECTIVES of this proposal are as follows a) to define a subsequent initiative, referred to as the Pilot Case, providing a model for establishing a European CO2 infrastructure project, targeting a gateway transferring CO2 from source to sink. The gateway will form the first leg of a cross-border network, allowing multiple sources and multiple sinks. b) to make profound assessments of the substantial funding needs and available resources. c) to solicit strong actions by the partners involved (member states of the EU and other countries) with a three-step approach (Berlin model). The objectives will be ACHIEVED by acquiring commercial and legal input from various sources, such as industries, research alliances and institutes, investors and funding agencies, and engage industries capable of providing the knowledge of how to initiate the first gateway(s) of a future European CO2 transport system. This will include - knowledge gathering, involving structured intelligence processes, - outline strategies, - assessment of lead times, - scenario building, - consideration of funding synchronization issues. - assessing the economic potential(s), timing, and organisation towards the deployment of CCS within Europe, and gradually increase the deployment so that it applies to Europe as a whole, thus providing a Pan-European infrastructure for CO2 transport, - the initiation of a strict planning of the infrastructure, including the handling of specific policy issues and regulatory requirements. These objectives demonstrate a clear RELEVANCE to the H2020 Work Programme, calling for proposals for a pilot case addressing areas and challenges targeted in the competitive low-carbon energy call. This proposal pursues activities that support 'the use of research outcomes by industry of a project resulting from synchronised funding processes by at least three Member States', as addressed in the LCE-19 call.

Bioenergy provides a significant proportion of the UK's low carbon energy supply for heat, transport fuel and electricity. There is scope for bioenergy to provide much higher levels of low carbon energy in future, but this requires appropriate development of key enabling technologies and strategic management to make the best use of the valuable, but finite, biomass resource. It must also be acknowledged that there have been significant concerns raised about the long term sustainability of bioenergy systems, including the wider social and economic impacts of biomass production. This project will create a Supergen Bioenergy hub for the UK which will bring together industry, academia and other stakeholders to focus on the research and knowledge challenges associated with increasing the contribution of UK bioenergy to meet strategic environmental targets in a coherent, sustainable and cost-effective manner. It will do this by taking a "whole systems" approach to bioenergy, so that we focus on the benefits that new technologies can bring within the context of the whole production and utilisation chain. In order to ensure focused research with rapid dissemination and deployment this will be done in close collaboration with industrial partners and other stakeholders, including government agencies. The hub will also take an expressly interdisciplinary approach to bioenergy, ensuring that we address important issues, such as the impacts of land-use change not just as scientific quantification exercises, but taking due account of the social and economic impacts. The hub will carry out leading edge research to address the engineering challenges associated with bioenergy deployment, with a particular focus on enabling flexible energy vectors. Therefore we will carry out core research to address existing problems, for example increasing scientific understanding of biomass combustion to improve environmental emissions and developing torrefaction (heating the feedstock), which could improve the logistics (and therefore costs) of using biomass. However, we will also work on more strategic, long term options; using academic expertise to help industry resolve the engineering problems experienced to date with some advanced technologies like gasification and assessing the prospects for biomass-derived synthetic natural gas as a low carbon alternative to diminishing natural gas supplies and developing new technologies to produce more sustainable transport fuels from biomass. The project will progress many different bioenergy options for the UK, which have many different costs and benefits. Therefore we will particularly focus on evaluating the ecological, economic and social aspects of the bioenergy chains being developed. That will allow us to provide appropriate scientific evidence and information to government and other stakeholders to facilitate development of the most sustainable bioenergy systems for the UK.