Projections of energy usage generally agree that the world will be heavily reliant on fossil fuels well into the second half of the 21st Century. Until our energy demands can be met by alternative sources, geological storage of CO2 in depleted petroleum reservoirs and deep saline aquifers is widely acknowledged to offer one of the most promising and practical means to reduce CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning power stations in the developed world and more importantly in rapidly developing nations such as China and India. Estimated reductions in CO2 emission from carbon capture and storage from fossil fuel generating stations can be as high as 90%. The UK Government has an ambitious target to reduce CO2 emissions by 80% by 2050, and Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is expected to play a major role to meet this target. Although CO2 has been injected into petroleum reservoirs for over 50 years to improve oil recovery, there are still many uncertainties that must be addressed before governments will commit to the level of CCS that is needed to have a significant impact on CO2 emissions. A large amount of research has been initiated in many countries to address these uncertainties. In addition, several CO2 storage pilot studies have been completed or are in progress both on- and off-shore as well as within depleted petroleum reservoirs and saline aquifers. This project addresses the gaps in our current knowledge in this field through an integrated laboratory and numerical modelling approach. The main objectives of the project can be summarised as:- - to develop methodologies to optimise CO2 injection well placement and control strategies accounting for uncertainties and influence on neighbouring licenses. - to establish the effects of in situ pressure and temperature conditions on caprock fracture closure and fault reactivation through laboratory and numerical investigations. - to investigate and improve our understanding of the in situ wellbore cement/rock and cement caprock behaviour in order to assess well integrity. - to develop novel wellbore and caprock leakage mitigation and remediation technologies utilising sealants and induced mineral precipitation processes.

Bioenergy provides a significant proportion of the UK's low carbon energy supply for heat, transport fuel and electricity. There is scope for bioenergy to provide much higher levels of low carbon energy in future, but this requires appropriate development of key enabling technologies and strategic management to make the best use of the valuable, but finite, biomass resource. It must also be acknowledged that there have been significant concerns raised about the long term sustainability of bioenergy systems, including the wider social and economic impacts of biomass production. This project will create a Supergen Bioenergy hub for the UK which will bring together industry, academia and other stakeholders to focus on the research and knowledge challenges associated with increasing the contribution of UK bioenergy to meet strategic environmental targets in a coherent, sustainable and cost-effective manner. It will do this by taking a "whole systems" approach to bioenergy, so that we focus on the benefits that new technologies can bring within the context of the whole production and utilisation chain. In order to ensure focused research with rapid dissemination and deployment this will be done in close collaboration with industrial partners and other stakeholders, including government agencies. The hub will also take an expressly interdisciplinary approach to bioenergy, ensuring that we address important issues, such as the impacts of land-use change not just as scientific quantification exercises, but taking due account of the social and economic impacts. The hub will carry out leading edge research to address the engineering challenges associated with bioenergy deployment, with a particular focus on enabling flexible energy vectors. Therefore we will carry out core research to address existing problems, for example increasing scientific understanding of biomass combustion to improve environmental emissions and developing torrefaction (heating the feedstock), which could improve the logistics (and therefore costs) of using biomass. However, we will also work on more strategic, long term options; using academic expertise to help industry resolve the engineering problems experienced to date with some advanced technologies like gasification and assessing the prospects for biomass-derived synthetic natural gas as a low carbon alternative to diminishing natural gas supplies and developing new technologies to produce more sustainable transport fuels from biomass. The project will progress many different bioenergy options for the UK, which have many different costs and benefits. Therefore we will particularly focus on evaluating the ecological, economic and social aspects of the bioenergy chains being developed. That will allow us to provide appropriate scientific evidence and information to government and other stakeholders to facilitate development of the most sustainable bioenergy systems for the UK.

Biomass is plant or woody material that during its growth has absorbed CO2 from the atmosphere through photosynthesis . When the biomass is used to produce bioenergy it re-releases to atmosphere the same amount of CO2 as was sequestered during growth. Therefore, as long as biomass growth is close in time period to release there is no net addition to the long term atmospheric CO2 concentration. However, some aspects of processing and using the biomass may generate additional greenhouse gas emissions that need to be accounted for and, given that the UK is trying to decrease all carbon emissions it is important that we make efficient use of our biomass resource by maximizing the production and use of truly sustainable resource and developing efficient pre-treatment and conversion technologies. It is also important that we make the best use of the sustainable biomass resource and fully understand the wider impact and costs of implementation. This project brings together leading UK bioenergy research groups to develop sustainable bioenergy systems that support the UK's transition to an affordable, resilient, low-carbon energy future. We will synthesize previous work on land and feedstock availability to assess the realistic potential resource for UK bioenergy and examine new crops that could support UK farming by delivering ecosystem benefits as well as biomass resource. We will test the performance of different feedstocks in high efficiency conversion options and develop new techniques which will improve resource efficiency in bioenergy systems, especially at small scale. We will evaluate the impact of using biomass for heat, electricity, transport fuels or chemicals to provide independent, authoritative information to guide decision making by industrialists and policy makers. We will assess the potential for bioenergy to contribute a proportion of the UK's future sustainable energy mix, taking into account the environmental, economic and social impacts of the processes. We will work with industrialists and policy makers to ensure that our work is relevant to their needs and reflects achievable implementation standards. We will share our findings in our research work widely with the industry and policy communities and make it accessible to societal stakeholders on our website, via special publications, in the conventional and on social media and with tailored events for public engagement.

Observed, Strategic, sustained action is now needed to avoid further negative consequences of climate change and to build a greener, cleaner and fairer future. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change the rise in global temperature is largely driven by total carbon dioxide emissions over time. In order to avoid further global warming, international Governments agreed to work towards a balance between emissions and greenhouse gas removal (GGR), known 'net zero', in the Paris Agreement. In June 2019 the UK committed to reaching net zero emissions by 2050, making it the first G7 country to legislate such a target. Transitioning to net zero means that we will have to remove as many emissions as we produce. Much of the focus of climate action to date has been on reducing emissions, for example through renewable power and electric vehicles. However, pathways to net zero require not just cutting fossil fuel emissions but also turning the land into a net carbon sink and scaling up new technologies to remove and store greenhouse gases. This will require new legislation to pave the way for investment in new infrastructure and businesses expected to be worth billions of pounds a year within 30 years. This challenge has far-reaching implications for technology, business models, social practices and policy. GGR has been much less studied, developed and incentivised than actions to cut emissions. The proposed CO2RE Hub brings together leading UK academics with a wide range of expertise to co-ordinate a suite of GGR demonstration projects to accelerate progress in this area. In particular the Hub will study how we can (1) reduce technology costs so that GGR becomes economically viable; (2) ensure industry adopts the concept of net zero in a way that will maintain and create jobs; (3) put in place sensible policy incentives; (4) make sure there is social license for GGR (unlike fracking or nuclear); (5) set up regulatory oversight of environmental sustainability and risks of GGR; (6) understand what is required to achieve GGR at large scale and (7) guarantee there are the skills and knowledge required for all this to happen. Building on extensive existing links to stakeholders in business, Government and NGOs, the Hub will work extensively with everyone involved in regulating and delivering GGR to ensure our research provides solutions to strategic priorities. We will also encourage the teams working on demonstrator technologies to think responsibly about the risks, benefits and public perceptions of their work and consider the full environmental, social and economic implications of implementation from the outset. CO2RE will seek to bring the GGR community in the UK as a whole closer together, functioning as a gateway to UK inter-disciplinary research expertise on GGR. We will inform, and stay informed, about the latest developments nationally and internationally, and reach out to engage the wider public. In doing so we will be able to respond to a rapidly evolving landscape recognising that technical and social change are not separate, but happen together. To accelerate and achieve meaningful change, we will be guided by consultation with key decision-makers and the general public, and set up a £1m flexible fund to respond to priorities that emerge with the help of the wider UK academic community. Ultimately we will help the UK and the world understand how GGR can be scaled up responsibly as part of climate action to meet the ambition of net zero.

The decarbonisation of industrial clusters is of critical importance to the UK's ambitions of cutting greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. The UK Industrial Decarbonisation Challenge (IDC) of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF) aims to establish the world's first net-zero carbon industrial cluster by 2040 and at least one low-carbon cluster by 2030. The Industrial Decarbonisation Research and Innovation Centre (IDRIC) has been formed to support this Challenge through funding a multidisciplinary research and innovation centre, which currently does not exist at the scale, to accelerate decarbonisation of industrial clusters. IDRIC works with academia, industry, government and other stakeholders to deliver the multidisciplinary research and innovation agenda needed to decarbonise the UK's industrial clusters. IDRIC's research and innovation programme is delivered through a range of activities that enable industry-led, multidisciplinary research in cross-cutting areas of technology, policy, economics and regulation. IDRIC connects and empowers the UK industrial decarbonisation community to deliver an impactful innovation hub for industrial decarbonisation. The establishment of IDRIC as the "one stop shop" for research and innovation, as well as knowledge exchange, regulation, policy and key skills will be beneficial across the industry sectors and clusters. In summary, IDRIC will connect stakeholders, inspire and deliver innovation and maximise impact to help the UK industrial clusters to grow our existing energy intensive industrial sectors, and to attract new, advanced manufacturing industries of the future.