America - Some Climate Change Skeptics - Others Draft Carbon Capture CCS Rules

I've been interested in CCS for a while (see my 2007 CCS corrosion blog & accidental global walk against warming posts).
So while scrolling my CSS RSS feeds in Googlereader, I was intrigued to read of the CCS Facebook page and the New Technology Magazine article on world's first proposed standard for deep underground storage of carb
There are great hopes for CCS to solve the Climate Change debacle - refer World Energy Outlook & CCS analysis. But the corrosion challenges had seemed substantial to me a few years back in 2007.
Concurrently the IEA has developed a CCS model regulatory framework, whilst US EPA has been drafting rules on CCS to protect drinking water (see Duke Uni / NYT / more refs on leak concerns) and on Greenhouse Gas reporting requirements for CCS, arising from President Obama's Interagency Taskforce on CCS. In October 2010, the 1st ever USA Congressional Geo-Engineering CCS Report was released with a key message : "You're better off looking into managing the climate than ignoring it."
The Global Carbon Capture Storage Institute has developed a "CCS Ready policy assists policy makers to clearly define the project standards necessary for CCS deployment as part of a transition to a low carbon economy,” says Global CCS Institute CEO Nick Otter.
Alberta has also released a Bill on key CCS legal issues :

• "clarification over ownership of the pore space into which the sequestered carbon dioxide (CO2) is injected;
• allocation of long-term liability for the intended permanent sequestration of the CO2;
• addressing the risk of the 'disappearing corporation'; and
• the creation of a post-closure stewardship fund. "

The standard drafting technical committee (TC) consists of over 30 experts from Canada and the USA - seeking to create a Canadian-USA standard. Fortunately the committee has "representation from government, industry and environmental non-government organizations (ENGOs). A full list is available online at www.ipac-co2.com.... also deeply involved is the International Performance Assessment Centre for Geologic Storage of Carbon Dioxide (IPAC-CO2 Research Inc.)
Rick Chalaturnyk, a geotechnical engineering professor and holder of the Foundation CMG Endowed Chair in Reservoir Geomechanics at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, is the chair of the TC. Sarah Forbes, who leads the CCS work at the World Resources Institute in Washington, D.C., is the vice-chair of the TC."
They are aiming to have public discussions in 2011 and have the standard published in 2012 to provide guidelines on scientific and commercial industrial CCS (eg power stations, refineries, cement plants) for regulators and industry. Given that ultimately the TC hopes for it to be the basis of an ISO standard, it is important that those interested in CCS across the globe keep an eye on its progress. Current or proposed projects across the globe include :

• Canada (Shell Alberta EIA / Quest)
• EU (Brussels conference / Demonstration Project Fund - Financing Criteria - NER - Darmstadt Uni - CCS Network - EU Working Group on CCS)
• Germany (Siemens Pilot Plant)
• Gulf (Doha Forum / Qatar)
• Italy (Enel - Kepco)
• Japan (JFE - halves capture costs )
• Korea (Korea CCS Assoc / Govt 2020 /Kepco - Enel)
• Netherlands (Rotterdam)
• New Zealand (SolidEnergy Lignite)
• Norway Statoil Mongstad
• Taiwan (Taichung )
• UK (Pipeline)
• USA (DOE)

As for how CCS will work - Air Pollution Facts has an interesting Youtube animation clip & another Youtube interview explaining how it works. There seem to be, broadly, three different types of capture technologies : post-combustion, pre-combustion, and oxyfuel combustion
There are a number of conferences being held covering CCS - the May 2011 conference in Bariproposes to look at onshore vs offshore CCS. An interesting analysis presented at Brussels November 2010 conference - see Miguel Bunuel.
In order to win environmental and community acceptance it will be essential that CCS can be unequivocally shown to be safe, reliable and that risks are identified and properly addressed. Strategies for community engagement on CCS are being developed by the World Resources Institute (Youtube / Platts). Mostly onshore CCS projects have been centred around sandstone, however the USA Wallula project is trying out basalt and will be monitored by the Batelle Institute.
Interesting in that Shell apparently canned a project in the Netherlands after Barendrecht community opposition. And there are other canned projects, including Ireland. Some are worried about its safety in a general sense, & liken it to nuclear waste stories from their childhood. Others raise concerns with the pipelines transporting the gas to the sequestration sites - although it is countered that such pipelines have existed for many years in the USA. Of course it all depends on temperatures, pressure & moisture levels in the CO2 gas). German research projects are also strongly opposed by community members. Costs worry many - although a Canadian amine capture method is supposed to be less resource & money demanding. More on the maths behind CCS.
Some cite : "In 1986 a large leakage of naturally sequestered carbon dioxide rose from Lake Nyos in Cameroon and asphyxiated 1,700 people. While the carbon had been sequestered naturally, some point to the event as evidence for the potentially catastrophic effects of sequestering carbon. "
It's not an issue being taken lightly : "If carbon capture and storage (CCS) fails as a method of providing clean coal, it will probably mean the end of coal-fired electricity generation in Western Europe, International Energy Agency (IEA) Clean Coal Centre manager Robert Davidson ... addressed the Fossil Fuel Foundation of Africa in Johannesburg, says that Western Europe is relying on CCS to transition coal from being a dirty unacceptable fuel to being a clean one that can be allowed to continue to fuel electricity generation."

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More info on CCS from

• Carbon Capture Journal
• CCS Ebooks - Download
• CISA Schools CCS article - excellent
• Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute refs - main web page
• Wikipedia CCS - always good to check Wikipedia to get basic concept then refer to other sources !

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Global Influential Voices - Conversations on Overcoming Crises - Big Yellow Taxis and Can ASQ Beat the Race to the Bottom

I've been updating my Facebook page - moving it beyond just family and school friends as colleagues wanted to friend me. So I've created some lists including an engineering / quality management list - which includes Quality bodies such as ISO & ASQ. I've been following both of them on Twitter but wasn't so sure about Facebook - but more professional bodies seem to be moving beyond their webpages into LinkedIn and then over to Facebook, Twitter, RSS & YouTube. Time had come to make some lists.

I'm in manufacturing and I've been a member of online digital global communities for about 15 years now in Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 worlds. And I continue to be delighted at the generosity of my buddies across the world. I've learned so much from them and been happy to share in return across my professional and community involvements.

My professional world stretches from product quality control to ISO 9001 Quality Management to Records Management to Knowledge Management to Forensic Engineering to Safety Management. I've really needed to learn from others in a more informal way, especially in the Global Financial Crisis era which trashed our formal training budgets.

So my membership of ASQ, an organization of quality professionals, has been an absolute life saver with its amazing breadth of online resources available to members globally. Recently I gave a presentation at a Knowledge Management conference in Canberra Australia on how social media tools have helped me to efficiently monitor emerging trends in quality management & technical barriers to trade. I need this in order to be on top of international trade trends in order to help my company gain & maintain access to international markets, via achieving 3rd Party certifications such as the EU's CE Mark.

As an Australian member of ASQ I was recently honored to be invited to participate in the ASQ Global Influential Voices program - (see our Moderator Paul's first blog). So I am delighted to be able to give back to those in ASQ Communities who have helped so many of us in the recent difficult years. And I find it incredible that I can be reading what quality guru's like Denis Arter are saying in almost real time. He's no longer just a book on my Quality Management bookshelf - but a real authentic person.

I'm also a member of several Standards Australia committees on Quality Management and also on Pressure Equipment, which is more at the coal face of quality. Get Pressure Equipment wrong and the outcomes can be serious even fatal.

What does that mean in reality ? Well I am a passionate traveller and over the last 5 years the overlapping spectra of quality/records/knowledge management has become very real to me as I travelled around the world ...

Think of the efforts to refurbish the Parthenon in Athens without original construction plans and working drawings ...

or the knowledge loss with the destruction of the library of Alexandria - not much remains as you can see from my pic below ...

I've been amazed to read of the incredible global collaboration led by New Zealand born / Australian RMIT Professor Mark Burry, that has finally seen the completion of Gaudi's La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona using collaborative & imaging technologies unimagined at the time of Gaudi's death, or even when I visited there in the early 1980's :

And with so much knowledge loss around the design & construction of our global cultural heritage, I was amazed to discover in Basilica San Marco, Venice, that the original designers & builders had kept a record which has assisted in its refurbishment over the years. What foresight !

People often seem too complacent about Quality till they discover problems and all too often too late: like that Joni Mitchell song Big Yellow Taxi - "you don't know what you've got till it's gone".

We do live in an increasingly globalized world and in the late 1990's there were fears about the newly emerging World Trade Organization (WTO) and globalization. Back then there was the Battle for Seattle - with a fear of crisis and a "Race to the Bottom" on many fronts : environment, quality, safety, living standards etc.

However an economist friend commented to me : There is nothing wrong with globalization if it is done right, with the right rules & controls.

Globalization need not be a crisis and indeed it is interesting to consider that the Asian script for Crisis represents both danger & opportunity :

Just like the global collaboration that has seen Barcelona's La Sagrada Familia finally completed & consecrated, I see the ASQ Global Voices of Quality initiative is opportunity to have global conversations, especially for those of us lone voices scattered across the globe, to promote the quality paradigm : sharing experiences & learnings - focusing on the Opportunities - done right it can counter the many Dangers facing our world & the fears of the Race to the Bottom.

Yes : I’m part of the ASQ Influential Voices program. While I receive a variety of quality resources as honorarium from ASQ in exchange for my commitment, the thoughts and opinions expressed on my blog are my own. I'm looking forward to learning, sharing and developing a community with my fellow participants, including Paul, our program leader.

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