UKCCSC News 20 April 2010

Dear Colleagues,

Thank you for interest and/or participating in our first UK Carbon Capture and Storage Community Network (UKCCSC) meeting. Approximately 100 of you braved some atypical Scottish springtime snow to attend our meeting over 30-31 March.

This email has details regarding a few future UKCCSC events, so please take some time to read the following:

1. PAST AND FUTURE UKCCSC MEETINGS
2. CONTACT INFORMATION FOR YOUR PHD STUDENTS
3. EARLY CAREER MEETING
4. ACADEMIC RESEARCH STRATEGY FOR UK GEOLOGIC STORAGE AND MONITORING OF CO2 MEETING
5. CCS REGULATORY SEMINAR

1. Past and Future UKCCSC Network Meetings We hope those of you who attended the March meeting found it both valuable and informative. We hope to continually improve our meetings, and your input is vital to this process. If you were a delegate, please take a few minutes to complete this online survey regarding our meeting at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FXQVYMY .

   All speaker presentations as well as a summary of our plenary discussions are available online at http://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/ccs/UKCCSC/Edinburgh10.html.

   As a reminder, our next biannual UKCCSC Network meeting will take place in Leeds September 14-15. This meeting will focus on the European CCS landscape. The agenda is being finalised but we will continue our lunch to lunch format.

   Please look for further information in our newsletter (to be emailed in the coming month) and posted on the UKCCSC Network website.

2. UKCCSC Network is gathering a list of early careers researchers, so please forward this email on to your PhD student and post docs. Any PhD students or post docs with no more than 5 years post-PhD experience wishing to receive information about our Early Careers Programme (meetings, summer school, networking resources). Please forward this email on to your early careers colleagues and ask them to email me at UKCCSC@ed.ac.uk to add them to our early careers group emails.
3. UKCCSC will be holding the first in a series of one-day Early Careers Workshops on Tuesday 6 July in Edinburgh. This workshop is for CCS researchers in the academic community who are either in the early stages of their career (e.g. PhD students, post docs with no more than 5 years post-PhD experience) or new to CCS (e.g. any researchers who have recently switched fields to work on CCS). This workshop will present an overview of the various CCS research areas and provide excellent networking opportunities for this growing academic field. Again, some travel/accommodation funds will be available, but may be limited per institution.
4. As suggested in the plenary discussion of our 30-31 March meeting, the UKCCSC Network will be hosting a specialist meeting on the topic of CO2 storage. This specialist meeting will aim to develop a research strategy for UK geologic storage and monitoring of CO2. More details for this meeting will be finalised in the coming week or two, but it will be in Edinburgh on Wednesday 7 July. We would like to open the invitation to the academic community, and will likely send a few invitations to industry stakeholders. Some travel/accommodation funds will be available, but may be limited per institution. Further details will be sent out in due course but please make time in your diaries to attend. While we can’t guarantee snow falling in July, we will do our best to make this meeting at least as interesting as last month’s gathering!
5. A CCS regulatory seminar is being held on Friday 21 May at Imperial College, London. The Health and Safety Executive are convening the event with support from the Environment Agency and Scottish Environment Protection Agency. The aim of the seminar is to enable dialogue between regulators, industry and researchers whose interests are in the successful introduction of large scale CCS technology. The seminar will be an opportunity to outline the regulatory approach being taken by health, safety and environment regulators for early CCS projects and to explore areas of uncertainty across the whole process chain from power plant to geological storage. For further information regarding the agenda and RSVPs, please contact Sarah Payne at s.everall@imperial.ac.uk by 7 May, as spaces are limited to 10 academics. UKCCSC may assist with travel/accommodation expenses for registered academics unable to attend without support; please contact ukccsc@ed.ac.uk with requests.

Thank you again for your participation in the UKCCSC network.

Kind regards,

Robin Cathcart

Acting UKCCSC Network Manager