The renewed UK Carbon Capture and Storage Research Centre (UKCCSRC) provides key fundamental research and coordination activities to help the UK to meet future energy targets. Building on the success of the current UKCCSRC, the new centre grant, starting in 2017, supports a whole-systems based research programme and is an inclusive national hub to set CCS research strategies, coordinate research delivery, promote community cohesion, and act as vehicle for industrial and stakeholder involvement.

The new Centre is led by the University of Sheffield, with partners the British Geological Survey, University of Cambridge, University of Edinburgh, University of Nottingham and Imperial College and additional investigators from Cardiff University, Cranfield University, University of Manchester, University of Strathclyde and University College London. An experienced Director and Centre Manager are supported by three Deputy Director research leads and the wider co-investigator team. Governance is through a Board appointed by the EPSRC.

The Centre operates a Scientific Council to link all UK research activities and an Independent Advisory Panel comprising stakeholders from Government, regulators, industry and trade associations. The CCS Network links together all with an interest in CCS. Comprehensive stakeholder engagement and the whole systems insights from the Centre's research will play a key role in developing the short, medium and long term strategies needed to accelerate the deployment of CCS in the UK.

International research links will be extended through collaborations with other world-leading CCS centres, participation in international initiatives (including CSLF, IEAGHG, GCCSI, UNECE) and an Associate Membership programme for leading researchers. The UKCCSRC will lead on coordinating international CCS strategy and activities, raising the UK's profile and ability to compete internationally.

Postgraduate training and Early Career Researcher support are delivered in close partnership with the CCS CDT at Nottingham. The new centre also supports data and knowledge transfer and promotes shared facilities.

The core research programme has three linked themes: storage, capture and systems. On storage, the recent Oxburgh Report highlighted work on residual storage uncertainties and transfer of long-term liability. Understanding of pressure increase and efficient use of reservoir pore-space are cross-cutting UK research priorities. Research topics include pressure migration and plume migration within storage reservoirs with impacts for geomechanical security, plume stability and site monitorability.

The capture theme focuses on next generation CO2 capture technologies and processes including high and low temperature solids-based cycles and links closely to the systems work. Detailed modelling of each process investigated together with results from other work on BECCS (using the PACT facilities), integrated electricity and hydrogen production from natural gas and supercritical CO2 cycles is used to produce data for integration into overall UK systems studies.

Work on UK-wide systems includes linking demand for heat and power, energy markets, industrial demand, CO2 transport infrastructure, and CO2 storage and greenhouse gas removal technologies (GGRs, particularly BECCS). The overall objective is to provide inputs into existing UK-wide energy system modelling and Integrated Assessment Models. We also examine 'social license to operate' for fossil-fired CCS as well as BECCS.

Building on the core research programme and a supplementary £1.5M flexible funds for open research calls, the Centre will act as a mechanism for the research community to coordinate applications for additional funding for fundamental research from the Research Councils and other sources. The Centre will also support initiatives to take the outputs of research forward in collaboration with applied research funding agencies and industry.

Potential Impact:
UKCCSRC 2017 impacts deliver economic and societal benefits in many ways:

Development of Improved Products and Services: CCS has the potential to significantly reduce the costs of decarbonising power generation, industrial processes, and the provision of low-carbon heat. In the short to medium term, our core research on capture and storage technology can contribute to improvements in CCS sub-systems that reduce both capital and operational costs. In the longer term novel technologies, such as the solids-based capture processes we are researching, are required to deliver deeper emissions cuts at the same cost, similar emission reductions at less cost, or both. Achieving these aims would support the establishment of a UK-based CCS industry; there may also be significant opportunities for export markets.

Policy Effectiveness: The CCS industry remains nascent in the UK primarily because of repeated failures over the last decade to conclude deployment initiatives. An underlying concern in these failures is the quality of evidence and analysis upon which the initiatives and their benefits have been assessed. One of the main themes of the UKCCSRC 2017 core research programme is therefore the development of improved models of CCS systems, which can be integrated with both top-down and bottom-up economic models used by key decision makers such as BEIS and HM Treasury.

Quality of Life: As noted by, for example, the Committee on Climate Change, wide scale deployment of CCS will result in lower energy costs and retention of (and possibly growth in) jobs within the UK's energy-intensive industry sectors. If CCS is combined with hydrogen production, domestic heating can be converted away from natural gas, which is one of the most difficult sectors to decarbonise and CCS on power will facilitate a low-carbon electricity system that would allow for greater penetration of electric vehicles that would lead to significant improvement in local air quality. Given the higher costs that economy-wide decarbonisation would impose on industry and consumers, our research on reducing costs of CCS (and on demonstrating the value of CCS) would be essential to any future roll out of CCS.

International Development: Following the Paris Agreement, both specific technology developments and more general knowledge about CCS, generated within the UK, should be made accessible to developing countries in order that they too can reap the benefits from CCS deployment. In a number of cases know-how transfer to the UK is also crucial. UKCCSRC 2017 will therefore continue to grow its programme of international networking and research project activities in order to facilitate such impacts.

Skills and Capacity Development : In order to support all of the above it is necessary for a sufficiently large and skilled workforce to exist. It must also exist at all the right levels and at the right times. UKCCSRC 2017 will continue its successful programme of human capital development activities, addressing the development needs of doctoral students, and post-doctoral researchers, as well as supporting early career academic staff and providing roles to develop tomorrow's academic leaders.

Facilities development: Capture: The UKCCSRC-PACT facilities provides a world-class open-access pilot scale test facility and highly specialized support staff to accelerate the commercialization of advanced technologies.
Facilities development: Storage: Parallel work on storage pilot injection facilities will be undertaken, to develop the first UK facility to calibrate injection mode, or test new equipment. It is intended that this will contribute to a proposal to RCUK STFC for a UK pilot injection site.