August News Update

After five years of flat-out work supporting the UK government with CCUS development with colleagues in GeoEnergy Durham in the WSP-led consortium, it was great to be finally let off the leash during a brief lull in the workload! The IEAGHG workshop on “Risk Management and Monitoring Networks” in the Netherlands this week was a great opportunity to present some of our more recent work supporting DESNZ’s development of the regulatory framework for CCS, particularly on the Supplemental Compensation Agreement (SCA) within the Government Support Package (GSP). The SCA enables the management of leakage risks at the storage site during operations and the post closure period. Building further on the containment probabilities in our 2023 Containment Certainty Report, we have helped the government to calculate maximum and ‘reasonable worst case’ liabilities with respect to the Track-1 CCUS projects under development. This underpinned discussions with the commercial insurance sector, leading to new commercial insurance cover for the NEP and HyNet clusters. Our poster presentation discussed the risks through time at such stores, highlighting the impact of the SCA and commercial insurance on the risk profile of an operator of the typical stores, and presented additional considerations for insurance that are of wider relevance to other CO₂ stores. Download a copy of the poster here.

(Photo credit: IEAGHG website).