01.08.2011: EU - New ZEP report offers exciting economic prospects for CCS technology
Carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) – a technology capable of trapping and safely storing dangerous CO₂ emissions from major industrial sources, thus reducing global CO₂ pollution and the threat of climate change – can become commercially viable by 2025, says a new European report. But a stronger political will is needed to make this promising future a reality.
Find the reports onZEPs web-page

15.06.2011: Italy - Porto Tolle CCS project approval overruled
Italy's high court has overturned government and local approval for Italian utility Enel's plans to convert its oil-fired Porto Tolle power plant into a coal technology plant. Approximately 250 MW of the plants capacity was planned with carbon dioxide capture and storage technology.
Read more in the Engineer

15.06.2011: Poland - 137 million euro granted for CCS in Poland
The Polish carbon dioxide capture and storage project in Bełchatów is granted 137 million euro from Norway Grants, which backs environmental, social and economic development programmes and projects in priority areas, agreed with each of the Grants’ 12 beneficiary countries in Europe.
Read more

14.06.2011: Alstom study: CCS is cost effective
Alstom has launched a detailed study of its 13 pilot and demonstration projects with carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS). It shows that the electricity costs from CCS-equipped coal-fired power plants will be competitive with electricity generated from renewable sources.
Read the press release here

14.06.2011: US - New Texas CCS alliance forming
Air Products has formed an alliance with Valero Energy Corporation and Denbury Onhore for a carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) project in the Valero Refinery in Port Arthur, Texas. Approximately one million tonnes of carbon dioxide will annually be recovered, purified and delivered by Air Products.
Read more at hydrocarbonprocessing.com

08.06.2011: US - Aker Clean Carbon demonstrates CCS technology in the US
Aker Clean Carbon has signed a technology collaboration agreement with US based Southern Company for testing and evaluating carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) technology.
Read the press release here

08.06.2011: Carbon dioxide storage risks to be evaluated
The European Commission funded project ECO2 has been launched. It will evaluate the potential impact of CO₂ leakage in sea bed storage sites in the Norwegian Sea and Barents Sea.
Read more at Eurasia Review

30.05.2011: IEA has published its CCS review
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has published its bi-annual legal and regulatory review on carbon dioxide capture and storage, also called the “CCS Review”. It collates contributions by national and regional governments, as well as leading organisations engaged in CCS regulatory activities.
Read the review here

30.05.2011: Germany - Germany starts carbon dioxide storage from flue gases
Vattenfall has started the injection of carbon dioxide into the Ketzin reservoir. For a period of about one month, around 2,000 tonnes of CO₂ will be transported and stored 200 kilometres from the coal-fired CO₂ capture pilot plant at Schwarze Pumpe to Ketzin.
Read the press release here

30.05.2011: Study - Chemical reaction prevents spread of carbon dioxide
Researchers from the University of Cambridge have shown that a simple chemical reaction can delay or prevent spreading of CO₂ in underground aquifers. In some cases, this may enhance the effect of storage and reduce the risk of leakage.
Read more in the Carbon Capture Journal

24.05.2011: EU - Six in ten Europeans wants CCS in new coal power plants
The European Commission has published a special Eurobarometer report about public awareness of CCS in 12 EU member states. Public knowledge is still generally low, but a higher proportion thought that CCS is effective to combat climate change, than those who did not. Also, 60 % said that CCS should be compulsory in new coal power plant.
Find the report here

23.05.2011: US - Positive CCS test results revealed
Alstom Power has announced successful results from their CCS project in the Mountaineer Plant in New Haven, West Virginia, owned by American Electric Power. This is the first facility in the world to both capture and store carbon dioxide from a coal-fired power plant.
Read more in the Carbon Capture Journal

16.05.2011: EU - 13 CCS Applications for NER 300
7 Member States have applied for a total of 13 CCS projects under the first call for proposals under the so-called NER300 funding mechanism. In addition, Member States have submitted 65 renewable energy project applications.
Read more

12.05.2011: UK - Major UK CCS project changes hands
New owners 2Co Energy are fully committed to the Don Valley Power Project, formerly known as the Hatfield project, after buying Powerfuel power Ltd. The 900 MW project is set to capture and store up to 5 million tonnes per year of carbon dioxide under the North Sea, and is an applicant of funding from the EU´s New Entrant Reserve (NER) 300 scheme.
Read more in the Carbon Capture Journal

29.04.2011: US - Drilling to start in US carbon dioxide storage project
Drilling has started at a storage reservoir in Wyoming expected to be able to hold 26 billion tonnes of CO₂ over a period of 50 years. The site is scheduled to be ready by the end of 2012.
Read more at Carbon Capture Journal

29.04.2011 Report: Industrial carbon dioxide reuse may support CCS
The Global CCS Institute and Parsons Brinckerhoff released the report ”Accelerating the uptake of CCS: Industrial use of captured carbon dioxide” on April 7th. Findings indicate that while reuse does not have material global CO₂ abatement potential, it can help to support near-term CCS project development in some locations and applications.
Read the report at the Global CCS Institutes web-page

29.04.2011 Bio-CCS part of IEAs Biofuels Technology Roadmap
The International Energy Agency (IEA) issued its biofuels roadmap in April. This roadmap stipulates the potential and presents a plan for the future use of biofuels in transport. IEA is positive that biofuels will play an important role in curbing CO₂ emissions. When produced in combination with CCS, this potential will be substantially higher.
Read the IEA report here

28.04.2011 Canada - Construction starts for world’s first large-scale coal-based CCS project
The Saskatchewan government has given green light for the power utility SaskPower to build the C$1.2 billion Boundary Dam CCS project. Construction will begin immediately, and the plant should be capable of capturing around one million tonnes of CO₂ every year when completed in 2014.
Read more at Bellona

15.04.2011 EU - EU storage guidance documents issued
The European Commission has issued the final non-binding guidance documents for Member States' implementation of the carbon dioxide storage directive. Bellona believes these are significant improvements on earlier drafts.
You can find the documents on e.g. ZEPs web-page

15.04.2011: UAE - CCS close to global deployment
Energy ministers from around the world endorsed recommendations for deployment of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) at the Clean Energy Ministerial Meeting in the United Arab Emirates 6-7 April.
Read more in the Carbon Capture Journal

15.04.2011: Germany - Germany endorses CCS
German Chancellor Angela Merkel´s Cabinet have agreed on legislation to permit carbon capture and storage (CCS). Industry, NGOs and other stakeholders have for several years pressed for laws that would allow carbon dioxide emissions from coal- and gas fired power plants to be permanently stored underground.
Read more at Bellona

14.04.2011: Brussels - Bonds introduced to speed up infrastructure
Commercial banks are still not ready for heavy infrastructure investments, at the same time as national government budgets are strapped by austerity measures. This is why the European Commission suggests introducing bonds, financed by the private sector and partly guaranteed by the EU. This policy was discussed in Brussels 11 April, in a conference hosted by DG Economic and Financial Affairs, with Commissioner Ollie Rehn and Director General for Energy Philip Lowe as speakers.
Read more

08.04.2011: EU - The future of carbon markets discussed in Brussels
Institut français des relations internationales (IFRI) arranged an event in Brussels, inviting speakers from the US and France to discuss the future of carbon prices and necessary measures to ensure the viability of the emissions trading scheme and green energy development.
Find links to the presentations at Bellonas web-page

08.04.2011 Vattenfall-Nuon commit to binding carbon dioxide standard for coal plant
Vattenfall-Nuon has made a commitment to accept a binding Emissions Performance Standard (EPS) of 360 gram CO₂ per kilowatt hour on a new partly coal-fired power plant. CCS and bioenergy will play an important role to reach these targets.
Read more

07.04.2011 Promising study of pressure caused by carbon dioxide storage
Studies show that open or partially open underground storage systems provide sufficient pressure relief for safe carbon dioxide storage. These findings were published by scientists from the Earth Sciences Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) in the new journal Greenhouse Gases: Science and Technology.
Read more in Science Daily

06.04.2011: Taiwan - CCS alliance emerging in Taiwan
Taiwan’s Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) launched a national carbon dioxide capture and storage alliance on March 28th as part of government efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Read more in Taiwan Today

29.03.2011: UK - UK first country to introduce carbon floor price
The UK finance minister George Osborne has announced plans to make the UK the first country to set a carbon dioxide floor price. The floor price will be introduced in April 2013, set at about €20.5 per tonne. It will then rise to €34.1 per tonne by 2020, according to the 2011 budget.
Read more in ENDS Europe

28.03.2011: India - CCS progress in India
The National Thermal Power Cooperation (NTPC) in India is in talks with the Japanese supplier Toshiba to build a pilot CCS project in India.
Read more at PowerPlant CCS

23.03.2011 Scotland - Promising Scottish carbon dioxide storage site evaluated
Rocks deep beneath the Moray Firth are capable of storing decades of CO₂ output from Scottish power plants. A consortium of the Scottish government, industry and researchers has issued the report ”Progressing Scotland's CO₂ storage opportunities”.
Read the report on Scottish Carbon Capture & Storage

21.03.2011 New movie on CO₂ carbon capture and storage
BIGCCS has published a movie about CO₂ carbon capture and storage. This schematic illustration explains how CCS can contribute to reaching global CO₂ emission reduction targets as well as it illustrates basic elements of the CCS technology.
See the movie on Youtube under this link

21.03.2011 Report: strong global commitment for CCS
The “Global status of CCS: 2010” report has been launched by the Global CCS Institute. It highlights the increasing commitment in many parts of the world for CCS projects, with 21 new projects since 2009. This makes the total 234 active or planned CCS project in 2010, 77 being large-scale integrated CCS projects (LSIPs).
Read the report on the Global CCS Institutes webpage

21.03.2011 Report - New IEA paper compares costs and performance of different carbon dioxide capture processes
The new IEA working paper entitled “Cost and Performance of Carbon Dioxide Capture from Power Generation” analyzes techno-economic data for carbon dioxide capture from power generation. It assesses the average costs of carbon dioxide capture on gas and coal-fired plants, and shows that for coal power plants, no single capture technology is fundamentally more attractive than its alternatives.
Read the IEA report here

17.03.2011 New monitoring technology eases carbon storage
OCTIO’s new technology paves the way for making Carbon Storage a much more secure solution, by monitoring the bed rock in real time.
Read more

07.03.2011: NER 300: Inventory of CCS applications to Member States
By February 9th, candidate projects to the EU funding scheme NER300 had to submit their proposals to their respective Member States. Here is a list of the 18 candidate projects Bellona is aware of so far, among which nine are located in the UK
Read more

07.03.2011: New carbon dioxide capture technology radically cuts energy use
A new technology is being developed using an amines-based absorbent called hyperbranched aminosilica to allow carbon dioxide capture with a much lower energy consumption than similar technologies.
Learn more about the technology on How it works.

21.02.2011: Bulgaria - Research project on UCG with CCS in Bulgaria
The University of Leeds, together with European partners from different private entities and research institutions are working together on combining underground coal gasification (UCG) with CCS in Bulgarian deep lying coals, with the objective to produce a cost-effective and ”near zero carbon footprint” energy.
The website of the project:
Further information is available on theLeeds University website.

18.02.2011: Significant research development on sealing CO₂ leakages
Even though research had already shown how to safely store CO₂ underground, it remains crucial for CO₂ Capture and Storage (CCS) deployment to ensure that CCS developers can actually stop a CO₂ leakage, in case it occurs. The Scottish Heriot-Watt University’s Institute of Petrolum Engineering has developed a technology that allows CO₂ storage operators to identify and seal such hypothetical CO₂ leaks. The world-leading sealing technology is now tested on a large scale.
Read more at Businessgreen.com

14.02.2011: EU - CCS demonstration project network: updates on five projects
The EU CCS Demonstration Projects Network released the summary progress reports of the following CCS projects: OXY CFB 300 Compostilla in Spain; Hatfield in the United Kingdom, Jänschwalde in Germany, Porto Tolle in Italy and Belchatów in Poland.
The network of the demonstration projects, sponsored by the European Commission, fosters knowledge sharing amongst the EU demonstration projects, all of which aim to be operational by 2015. It is also intended to raise thus the public understanding of CCS.
Below are links to the individual reports:
First Interim ReportOXY CFB 300 Compostilla, Spain
First Interim Report Hatfield, United Kingdom
First Interim ReportJänschwalde, Germany
First Interim Report Porto Tolle, Italy
First Interim report Belchatów, Poland

14.02.2011: Brazil - Brazil will see offshore CO₂ storage in 2011
The Brazilian state oil company Petrobas intends to start CO₂ storage in the offshore Lula field by March 2011. The initiative will consist in keeping the CO₂ produced by subsalt oil exploitation from entering the atmosphere, by injecting it into the oil reservoirs or other geological layers in the sub-surface.
Access the press release here.

14.02.2011: Denmark - Maersk Oil to embark on CCS projects
Maersk Oil, a fully owned subsidiary of A.P. Møller – Mærsk A/S, has acquired licences to Clean Energy System’s Oxy-Fuel technology that allows CCS in combination with oil and gas projects.
Access the press release here

07.02.2011: Australia - The GCCSI releases four “knowledge products,” stemming from CCS projects experience
On January 31st, 2011, the GCCSI released four reports developed by the American CCS projects Tenaska Trailblazer and Tenaska Nelson 6, which are involved in the GCCSI “Project Support Programme.” They give interesting input on project development histories (Trailblazer and Nelson 6); CO₂technology selection process (Trailblazer); and public engagement (Trailblazer). These publications are part of the knowledge sharing activities of the GCCSI.
Access the four publications here.

04.02.2011: The RISCS project researches into impacts and safety in CO₂ storage
The project Research into impacts and safety in CO₂ storage (RISCS) gathers 24 partners from research institutions, industry, environmental associations, led by the objective to improve the understanding of the possible environmental impacts of geological storage of CO₂. The project meets the CCS stakeholders’ need to know more about the safety of CO₂ storage and the risks for human populations, ecosystems, and groundwater.
Read more at the project homepage

04.02.2011: New technology allows carbon dioxide capture for $15 per ton
Developed by Inventys, the VeloxoTherm process is a new gas separation technology, which uses a structured absorbent and a rotating cylindrical frame. The process has the ability to recover the heat energy produced during the absorption of carbon dioxide and use it to release the carbon dioxide, reducing thereby the overall costs.
The feature article is available in the Carbon Capture Journal, issue 19.

03.02.2011: EU - Greens point to potential for CCS in industry and biofuels
A fresh report by the Öko-Institut sponsored by the Greens/European Free Alliance shows that for the EU to reach its stated greenhouse gas emission reduction goal by 2050, CCS in the steel and cement industry as well as in biofuel processing would need to abate 300 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year by 2050. This amounts to about 7% of total EU emissions reduction from 2008 to 2050.
Read the report here

23.01.2011: Germany - CO₂ storage debate in Germany hardening: northern Länder demand right to block storage on their territory
After yet another postponement of the German law implementing the EU CO₂ storage directive in November 2010, German Minister of Economy Rainer Brüderle of the liberal FDP has apparently had to further water down his proposal.
Read more here.

 23.01.2011: Spain - CIUDEN takes further step in constructing carbon dioxide capture plant
The construction of the carbon dioxide capture plant in the locality of Cubillo del Sil (León) comes to an end with the engineering and construction of the Carbon Dioxide Compression and Purification Unit.
Acces CIUDEN press release here.  
Read the output report from the CCS regulatory exercise in depth here.

10.01.2011: EU - Great need for specific CO₂ storage data & transport infrastructures
An Arup feasibility study for Europe-wide CO₂ transport infrastructure commissioned by the European Commission was released in October 2010. Considering the domestic mismatch between emission sources and CO₂ storage locations in some countries, the study gives a blueprint of the infrastructure needed to transport the captured CO₂, thus identifying the strategic planning issues to address. The study also gives recommendations to improve the CO₂ storage capacity estimations.
Access here the CCS study.

12.01.2011: Canada - Weyburn, Saskatchewan: Safe storage of CO₂crucial
People who have lived in proximity of the Weyburn oil field in Saskatchewan, Canada, which uses CO₂ for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) in oilfields, have questions about the project. Although extensive research indicates that the injected CO₂ has stayed put, there is a need for a thorough investigation when questions about safety are raised.
Read the findings ofPTRC on the ZEP website, info from theindependent study by IPAC-CO₂ Research Inc. or news articles (iPolitics).

14.01.2011: New study on the CCS perspectives in the industry
Industry accounts for more than 40% of the global CO₂ emissions and the figure is not expected to significantly decrease in the next decades. CCS technology for many of these emission sources is ready, shows a new study, and its deployment on industrial sources must therefore be a priority. 
Read the feature article on the Carbon Capture Journal.

19.01.2011: Scotland - Outcome of the Scottish CCS Regulatory Test Exercise released
Representatives from the Scottish Government presented the Scottish ‘CCS Test Exercise’ to a workshop of the European Commission’s Sustainable Fossil Fuel Forum on January 12th. This consists in a dry-run exercise to identify the loopholes of a present legislative system regarding capture, transport and storage of CO₂. The report from the exercise provides a blueprint for other countries.
Read the output report from the CCS regulatory exercise in depth here.

22.01.2011: US - New CCS RD&D roadmap released
The National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) has released the latest DOE/NETL Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage RD&D Roadmap. It shows US willingness to develop safe, reliable and cost-efficient CCS technology and to use CCS as a key element in national efforts to mitigate climate change.
Download the DOE/NETL CCS RD&D roadmap here.