The potential for carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies to make a significant contribution to mitigating the risk of dangerous climate change has been recognised by a number of international bodies including the G8, International Energy Agency and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. A range of commercial-scale demonstration projects are being proposed with the aim of CCS being available for widespread deployment from around 2020. A significant effort is required to train scientists and engineers (and others) to be able to design, construct and successfully operate these and future projects. It is also crucial to use lessons from these projects to inform CCS R&D, as well as drawing on insights from other fields that could be crucial for rapid development of CCS. Recognising these needs, the Research Councils have made a significant investment in UK CCS R&D capacity including through the E.On/EPSRC partnership and a programme of collaborative work with China.The UK Carbon Capture and Storage Community network (UKCCSC) has been established to support the UK academic community during a period (2009-2013) when significant changes in the CCS landscape are expected. The impacts of the Network will include better co-ordination within the UK CCS R&D community and more effective communication of accurate and impartial information, including key research results, to a wide range of stakeholders in a timely manner. The UKCCSC network will be the main mechanism to enable inter-communication between Research Council-funded projects on CCS. It will also contribute to maximising the efficiency of UK intellectual leverage, including within the international community. UKCCSC is deliberately not sponsored by any commercial entity so that it is able to maintain independence.UKCCSC aims to provide a 'one stop shop' for access to the UK CCS academic community. It intends to encourage collaborations that can support high quality work that will advance fundamental understanding of CCS technology, and the non-technical impacts of its use, and contribute to building world class capacity in this area. Any UK-based researcher is eligible to participate in UKCCSC core activities. These include two face-to-face meetings each year for academic researchers to share ongoing work, as well as updating key stakeholders. Between meetings, the UKCCSC website will provide relevant resources. A regular newsletter will also be circulated to UKCCSC members and registered stakeholders.Additional UKCCSC activities will support the development of a dynamic and stimulating environment for research and innovation on CCS in the UK. These include a programme of activities for early career researchers and specialist workshops or seminars organised in response to proposals from UKCCSC members. Support for exchange visits and other activities to develop strategic alliances within the UK or with international collaborators will also be available to UKCCSC members. In addition, it is expected that UKCCSC will help its membership to contribute to shaping future priorities for funding of CCS R&D in the UK.The UKCCSC secretariat will be responsible for running the network on a day-to-day basis. The full-time network manager supports and promotes academic CCS activities in the UK including by organising events. They are supported by a part-time early careers co-ordinator, webmaster and secretary. The secretariat is jointly hosted by Imperial College London and the University of Edinburgh and managed by Dr Jon Gibbins and Prof Stuart Haszeldine. A project advisory committee will be established to guide the development of UKCCSC as it responds to the rapidly evolving challenges and requirements for CCS R&D. An international reference user group, formed of invited members from representative organisations in other countries, will ensure that strong links are maintained between UK researchers and the international CCS community.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

Global carbon emissions must decline rapidly to reduce the risk of dangerous climate change. Independent government advisers, the Committee on Climate Change, recently stated that the UK should reach net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050. This means that the UK's emissions of greenhouse gases should not exceed its ability to remove carbon from the atmosphere. Achieving this target will mean far-reaching changes to the economy, and to the way that people live in their homes, and travel. Yet so far, as the Committee notes, "To date, much of the success in reducing UK emissions has been invisible to the public... reaching net-zero emissions will require more involvement from people." A crucial challenge over the coming decade, then, will be to find ways to encourage and enable people to contribute to this shift to zero-carbon. This proposal looks at one crucial aspect of this shift. It examines how the energy system could be managed better, to achieve these climate change goals, and to make the most of the innovation in energy products and services. Such innovation includes the decentralisation of energy generation technologies, integration between heat, electricity and transport technologies, and increasing digitalisation and data-driven services. The project looks in particular at how to improve governance of the energy system. Governance is defined as the rules, regulations and institutions that govern the way the system is run. At the moment, in energy governance, individuals are understood primarily as 'consumers' of electricity, gas and transport fuel. Yet innovative technologies and business models give individuals the opportunity to shift away from a passive consumption role, to instead generate and store their own power, adjust how much electricity they take from the grid, and reduce their demand. This project examines how governance can be reshaped, to make the most of this innovation, and to support and build engagement for rapid carbon reduction. The project will learn from existing case studies of innovation, to develop a series of proposals, or 'Pathways', which describe how the future energy system could be governed. These Pathways will be discussed at a set of deliberative workshops. The workshops will allow representative groups of citizens to debate the future of the energy system together with businesses, and regulators and government organisations who manage the system. At the workshops, these three groups will discuss ways in which the energy system could be governed, and work together to propose new policies and approaches. Comparisons will also be made with other regions and countries, including Denmark, Sweden and the US states of California and New York. The evidence from the project will be used by project partners the Committee on Climate Change and the Energy Systems Catapult, as well as other organisations, to develop the advice that they give to government. Businesses will also be able to use the evidence to test and develop new business models. The research will develop guidelines for involving people in decisions about energy governance, based on the experience of the deliberative workshops. These guidelines will also inform the work of project partners and other organisations. Ultimately, the project aims to find ways to better engage citizens in rapid carbon reduction, in order to achieve the UK's energy and climate goals.

Recent research suggests that the effects of climate change are already tangible, making the requirement for net zero more pressing than ever. Part of the solution for net zero will be geo-energy technologies in the North Sea, including offshore wind, blue and green hydrogen, and carbon capture and storage. These new technologies will interact with each other in the potentially-sensitive subsurface, seabed and water column. The project will assess the environmental sustainability of these technologies combined, for selected test areas of the UK offshore, and will develop solutions to make sure that the technology and infrastructure of the offshore energy transition, works well, is efficient, and does not harm the environment. Work package 1 focuses on the security and viability of industrial scale subsurface offshore hydrogen storage and carbon dioxide storage and investigates how the two might interact, and how best to make decisions about when to use storage space for hydrogen, and when for carbon dioxide. Work package 2 focuses on the characteristics of the sea bed and water column above the storage sites in the geology, and the effects of gas or fluid release from geological storage on the environment, and the environmental interactions of other offshore energy infrastructure like windfarms and cables. Work package 3 will focus on the social implications of an offshore energy transition, evaluating the risks and benefits of different technological scenarios to ecosystem services (the natural benefits that we get from the ocean, like fisheries), and it will look for net benefits where combinations of technologies provide extra environmental or efficiency improvements. Work package 4 will work with other WPs to ensure a fully integrated project, bringing together outputs from each work package into a usable form to support the decisions that stakeholders like the Oil and Gas Authority, Crown Estate, National Grid, and operators like Equinor, might make in the future.

This work has two principal aims: a) to develop a roadmap that will help the Research Councils and others to plan their research activities in ways that will contribute to the achievement of the UK's energy policy goals; and b) to conduct a programme of research that will assess how effectively different countries conduct their energy research and development (R&D) activities in different technology areas with a view to learning lessons for the more successful execution of policy. The roadmap will consist of a top-level document which will act as a bridge between higher level energy strategies and more specific R&D plans for individual technologies. The aim is to improve the coherence of energy policy on the one hand and energy research activities on the other. The top-level document will be supplemented by web-based roadmaps for individual technology areas such as carbon capture and storage or different forms of renewable energy. Demand-side technologies, for example for transport and buildings, will also be covered. Given the interplay between technology and human behaviour, especially on the demand side, social scientists as well as scientists and engineers will be involved. The roadmaps will address both technological needs and needs for training and capacity-building. The roadmaps will be produced through interviews with policymakers and R&D funders and through a mixture of facilitated technical workshops and strategic workshops engaging a wider range of stakeholders. The first task in the research programme is to map out "systems of innovation" for different energy technologies in different countries. We intend to cover a small number of EU countries, the US and China. The mapping will cover institutions and their roles, networks and research capacity. The task will be carried out through documentary analysis and interviews in the relevant countries. We will also look at systems of innovation internationally, for example through education and training, and the activities of multinational companies. The second task will be to develop and analyse measures for the effectiveness of R&D activities in different systems of innovation. Many countries intend to achieve fundamental transitions in their energy systems, for example by moving to low-carbon technologies. We will draw on a new branch of innovation theory, "transitions theory", to develop measures of effectiveness. Finally, we will review hypotheses and findings from the analysis of the effectiveness of R&D activities with experts and draw conclusions about how the success of energy R&D programmes and their contributions to energy policy can be improved.