NERC is the principal supplier of geological research expertise in the UK and has the UK's largest academic CCS research group. British Geological Survey (BGS) is a research centre of the Natural Environment Research Council and we have around 800 staff . The Project will be staffed by the CCS Research Team within the NERC Energy Programme at BGS.
Expertise and capacity
NERC is a leading player in the field of underground CO2 storage. We coordinated the Joule 2 project and have a leading research role in a number of major EU/industry and government funded projects. In the last two years NERC have carried out more than 40 CO2 storage projects for the EU, industry and the UK and overseas governments, with an annual CCS budget of over £1m: Weyburn project; Nascent project; CO2ReMoVe project; monitoring programmes, European storage sites; site monitoring tool, IEAGHG; review of monitoring technologies for CO2 storage, UK government; reviews of Otway Basin and Gorgon CO2 storage projects, Australia; Lead Author IPCC Special Report on CO2 Capture and Guidelines for Compiling National Greenhouse Gas Inventories; leader and contributor to two consortium-funded CCS projects, Scotland; geological interpretation and modelling of onshore and offshore UK storage sites.
NERC is the technical advisor for storage for the UK Government, for a full-chain, full-size CCS demonstration project. NERC has led assessments of storage capacities and capability building for the UK Near Zero Emissions China project and has also been involved in the FP6 COACH project. Finally NERC is coordinator of the FP7 RISCS project.
For SiteChar, we will utilise teams of experts based at two sites. The site characterisation work will be undertaken predominantly at Edinburgh, Scotland and input from CCS expertise on licensing and regulatory issues at Nottingham, England. There will be a clear separation between those undertaking this site characterisation and developing the dry-run licence application in WP3, and those responsible for reviewing the licence applications within WP2.