Every two years, the International Energy Agency Greenhouse Gas R&D Program (IEAGHG) brings together the world’s experts on carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) technologies. The most recent event was held in Melbourne, Australia from October 22-25, 2018 and included over 1000 delegates.
For more information click here
The 3rd ACT Knowledge sharing workshop (KSW) took place on the 13 November 2018 kindly hosted at the facilities of RWE Kraftwerk in Niederaußem, Germany. The objective of the KSW is to have updates from the projects funded by ACT and share results between these projects and relevant stakeholders from academia, industry and decision makers.
Heiko Gerhauser from PtJ opened the workshop and welcomed all before handing over to the ACT coordinator, Ragnhild Ronneberg from the Research Council of Norway (RCN), who briefly explained the objectives of the ACT initiative and the objectives and outcomes accomplished during these last two years. Thereafter we had an interesting introduction by Peter Moser to RWE, their importance in the energy sector and their CCU-projects at the plant - one of which is the ALIGN project.
Our host in Germany, PtJ Jülich had also organised for a presentation on the strategies for the Energy sector in Germany (Energiewende) and the 7th Energy Research Program, by Johannes Kerner from the Ministry of Economics and Energy. He pointed out that energy efficiency is a priority and the importance of renewables and sector coupling. Development of low CO2 emission industrial processes (in e.g. cement and steel factories) is important, as is also the utilisation of CO2 and conversion of it to other products.
At this workshop we had the honour of having Vassilios Kougionas, the project officer of ACT from the European Commission, present. He dedicated a great word to all participants underlining the tremendous and great work having been done by ACT for taking up both the SET-plan issues as well as the Mission innovation topics in the CCUS field.
All 8 projects from the first ACT call were presented, and they shared the value and the advantages of the transnational collaboration in R&D and innovation actions in the CCUS-area.
Furthermore, a recent new partner in ACT, US-Department of Energy represented by John Litynski, gave us good remarks and information regarding CCUS in the United States, approaching the concept of strategy in this sector for the future and presenting their projects as a part of the solution for the global concerns in terms of energy. Important issues in the strategy for CCUS on fossil fuel in US is based on the energy production, grid reliability and resilience, energy security and job creation.
During the day, we had the opportunity to visit the power plant at RWE and got information about their CCU-project at their facility (see picture).
The ACT consortium acknowledge the work being undertaken by the ACT funded projects and also wants to thank the organising group at PtJ and RWE for a very interesting and inspiring workshop.
For more information click to view each presentation below:
ACT – Objectives and status, Ragnhild Rønneberg
RWE Power – Coal innovation centre, Peter Moser
Energiwende and the 7th Energy Research program, Johannes Kerner
ALIGN, Peter van Os
ELEGANCY, Svend Munkejord
PRE-ACT, Peder Eliasson
CCUS in US, John Litynski
ECO-BASE, Anders Nermoen
ACORN, Hazel Robertson and Philippa Parmiter
DETECT, Marcella Dean
3D-Caps, Robert de Boer
GASTECH, Shahriar Amini
Forty-seven pre-proposals were received for the ACT second call, which closed on 12 September 2018. The pre-proposals requested a total amount of €121 million, which represented a considerable oversubscription.
After national eligibility checks and evaluation by the ACT consortium, 27 pre-proposals representing a funding request of €68 million were invited to submit full proposals by 1 March 2019.
This successful first-stage of the second call shows a contribution by all ACT partner countries, all targeted CCUS topics are addressed, and remains highly competitive.
ELEGANCY is an ACT research project that aims to develop a commercial model for industrial CCS and hydrogen production and distribution.
The partners involved in the ELEGANCY project are hosting a conference in Brussels, 8 November 2018, open to everybody. The conference will be an opportunity to learn about the ELEGANCY project and the results from its first year of operation, and to hear perspectives of relevant external stakeholders.
You can follow this link to see the program and register for the conference.
Huge interest for the ACT call
The due date for submission of pre-proposals to stage 1 was September 12th 2018. A total of 47 applications were submitted from all eleven participating countries (figure 1).
The budget that is available for this Call from each funding agency is shown in Table 1, a total range of €22.05-30.05 million.
The applied funding from the 47 applications is approximately 121 million euros which greatly exceeds the total budget of the Call which is 30.5 million euros. This reveals that there will be a tough competition among all applicants since they request more than four times the available budget (figure 2).
The ACT consortium is very pleased to see such a huge interest for the Call, and especially that all ACT countries are represented in this portfolio of applications.
The applications will be evaluated according to procedures described in the Call text and all applicants will be informed whether or not they qualify to proceed to the second stage (full proposal) no later than November 30th 2018.
The due date for submission of full proposals to stage 2 is March 1st 2019 at 13:00 CET.
View full file here.
The ACT projects are already delivering interesting results and you can now learn more about what they have achieved.
Many ACT projects will be present at the GHGT-14 conference in Melbourne 21-26 October 2018 and present their results.
You can find a summary of presentations and activities from the ACT projects below. Hopefully, the ACT presentations will be of interest for many because the knowledge sharing from ACT at GHGT-14 will be valuable in our common strive to get CCS deployed globally.
ALIGN-CCUS and CSIRO are organising a half day (closed) workshop at GHGT14 where ALIGN-CCUS results are shared and discussed with Australian projects working on the same topics along the CCUS chain.
Van Os P, Kvamsdal H, Haugen HA, Akhurst M, Moser P, Mikunda T, ter Mors E, ALIGN CCUS: an ERA ACT project on the full CCUS chain to accelerate implementation of decarbonisation in industrial areas (ALIGN-CCUS, overall), Poster
Akhurst M, Bentham M, Kirk K, Neele F, Grimstad, A-A, Steps to achieve storage readiness for European industrial CO2 source clusters, ALIGN-CCUS (ALIGN-CCUS WP3.1), Oral presentation
Neele F, Gittins C, Wildenborg T, Mikunda T, Initiating large-scale storage in the Netherlands offshore (ALIGN-CCUS WP3.2), Oral presentation
Mikunda T, Neele F, Akhurst M, Pearce J, Skagestad R, Morgenthaler S, Sava CS, Maver M, Targeted CCUS R&D activities in industrial clusters (ALIGN-CCUS WP5), Oral presentation
Juliana Monteiro, Isabella Stellwag, Martin Mohana, Arjen Huizinga, Purvil Khakharia, Peter van Os, Earl Goetheer, De-oxygenation as countermeasure for the reduction of oxidative degradation of CO2 capture solvents, Oral presentation
Purvil Khakharia, Arjen Huizinga, Henk Trap, Juliana Monteiro, Earl Goetheer, Lab scale investigation on the formation of aerosol nuclei by a Wet Electrostatic Precipitator in the presence of SO2 in a gas stream, Poster
Purvil Khakharia, Shreyas Harsha, Arjen Huizinga, Juliana Monteiro, Earl Goetheer, In-situ experimental investigation on the growth of aerosols along the absorption column in PCCC, Oral presentation
Julia Barrio, Susana Garcia, M. Mercedes Maroto-Valer, Earl Goetheer, Purvil Khakharia, Juliana Garcia Moretz-Sohn Monteiro, Peter Moser, Georg Wiechers and Eva Sanchez Fernandez, Impact of transient operation on amine emissions at the Niederaussem capture plant. Poster
Peter Moser, Georg Wiechers, Sandra Schmidt, Knut Stahl, Muhammad Majid, Sven Bosser, Arthur Heberle, Hiroshi Kakihira, Mutsuhiro Maruyama, Ralf Peters, Stefan Weiske, Petra Zapp, Stefanie Troy, Bastian Lehrheuer, Benedikt Heuser, Thorsten Schnorbus, Jaap Vente, Jean-Pierre Pieterse, Earl Goetheer, Demonstrating the CCU-Chain and Sector Coupling as Part of ALIGN-CCUS - Dimethylether from CO2 as chemical Energy Storage, Fuel and Feedstock for Industries, Oral presentation
Peter Moser, Georg Wiechers, Sandra Schmidt, Reinhold Elsen, Earl Goetheer, Purvil Khakharia, Juliana Garcia Moretz-Sohn Monteiro, Klaus-Joachim Jens, Kjell-Arne Solli, Eva Sanchez Fernandez, Susana Garcia, Mercedes Maroto-Valer, Julia Barrio, Hanne Marie Kvamsdal, MEA consumption – ALIGN-CCUS: Comparative long-term testing to answer the open questions, Poster
Ardi Hartono, Hammad Majeed, Andrew Tobiessen, Hallvard F Svendsen and Hanna K Knuutila. Aerosol growth in an absorber for a post combustion CO2 capture using the 2-Amino-2-methyl-1-propanol/ Piperazine (CESAR 1) solvent, Poster
Kjell-Arne Solli, Lars Erik Øi, Electrochemical Corrosion Measurements of MEA aqueous solutions at elevated temperatures, Oral presentation
Lothe et al. - Effects of uncertainties in fault and seismic interpretations on CO2 storage pressure distribution and pressure control (accepted for poster)
Wiese et al. - Multi-physical model and inversion of the Ketzin CO2 storage reservoir covering the full operational period (accepted)
Eliasson et al. - Pressure control and conformance management for safe and efficient CO2 storage – an overview of the Pre-ACT project (accepted for oral)
Barros et al. - Quantifying the efficiency of surveillance strategies for subsurface CO2 storage application (accepted)
ELEGANCY plan a side event on 23 October right after the end of the scientific programme.
Antonini, Streb, van der Spek, Gazzani, Sutter, Mazzotti: Low carbon hydrogen production with (V)PSA for H2/CO2 purification: Oral
Munkejord, Hammer, Ervik, Lund, Skarsvåg, Odsæter: Dynamic simulation of CO2 injection wells: Oral
Streb, van der Spek, Gazzani, Antonini, Sutter, Mazzotti: H2 purification with integrated CO2 separation: Poster
Floris Swennenhuis from Radboud has had an abstract accepted on Just Transition
Niklas will present a poster on leakage risk assessment
Oral presentation by Ambrose Ugwu, Abdelghafour Zaabout, Schalk Cloete, and Shahriar Amini: Pressurized Gas Switching Reforming Using Ni-based and Non Ni-based Oxygen Carrier: A Demonstration of a Novel Chemical Looping Concept
ECO-BASE will have a poster with a general overview of first results and outcomes.
Niko Kampman and Marcella Dean (Shell) submitted a poster
A New ACT Call was published 4 June 2018. This is a great funding opportunity for anyone who has a unique idea for developing CCUS technology.
Eleven countries participate in the new ACT call which has a budget of € 22 - 30 million. The intention of ACT is to facilitate the emergence of CO2 capture, transport, utilisation and storage (CCUS) by accelerating and maturing technology through targeted financing of innovation and research activities.
The New ACT Call addresses technological, environmental, social and economic challenges required to accelerate CCUS.
The intention is that new projects funded through the new ACT Call will make a significant contribution to establish CCUS as an international climate change mitigation tool.
The following countries participate in the new ACT Call: France, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, and USA.
Read more about the new ACT Call.
Download the full Call Text for the new ACT Call.
The ACT consortium hosted a webinar 28 June to inform about the new ACT Call.
The presentation from the webinar can be downloaded.
Please contact the ACT National Contact Persons at any time to get all the information you need about the AC T Call
There were close to 60 participants at the webinar. All of them were invited to put their names at the list below. The list can be useful for everybody who wants to get in contact with CCS experts and build consortia for an New ACT application.
Participants at the ACT webinar 28 June 2018:
Research Engineer, CNRS, Institute of Chemistry of Clermont-Ferrand
Email : karine.ballerat@uca.fr, Phone : +33 473407189, website
Key interests: thermodynamics; experimental developments; energetic properties (enthalpy, heat capacity), transport properties (volumes, densities, viscosities), phase equilibria (VLE, LLE).
Head of Science: Marine System Modelling, Plymouth Marine Laboratory
Tel: +44 (0)1752 633462, Email: jcb@pml.ac.uk, Website
Key interests: Offshore storage monitoring, marine systems and impacts
Assistant professor, Institute of Chemistry of Clermont-Ferrand,
Email: yohann.coulier@uca.fr, phone: +33 (0)473407196, website, google scholar
Key interests: experimental thermodynamic, thermodynamic modeling, phase equilibria, CO2 absorption, amine based solvent, CO2 sequestration
How will Europe’s industries make the shift to a low-carbon economy without losing out in a global marketplace? The scientists at the University of Sheffield has made a video to show how to meet this challenge. They are working to scale up carbon capture technologies while bringing down their cost.
Read more and see Movie at the ALIGN-CCUS project's website.
France and USA are new ACT members from May 2018.
The rest of the ACT consortium welcomes ADEME from France and US OE as new ACT members. They were formally included as new members at the ACT Policy Board meeting 22 May 2018. The Board said that it is fantastic to have France and USA on board!
France and USA are participating in the new ACT call published 4th June 2018 and this strengthen the international dimension of ACT.
With France and USA on board ACT will be better positioned to deliver results that can lead to global deployment of CCUS as a climate change mitigation tool.
The new French partner ADEME is the French Environment and Energy Management Agency and the contact person is Aïcha El Khamlichi (Aicha.elkhamlichi@ademe.fr).
The new US partner is the US Department of energy, Office of Fossil Energy. Contact persons are Mark Ackiewicz (mark.ackiewicz@hq.doe.gov), John Litynski (john.litynski@hq.doe.gov ), and Darin Damiani (darin.damiani@hq.doe.gov).
GSRT from Greece has join ACT as a new member.
The rest of the ACT consortium welcomes GSRT as a new member. GSRT is the General Secretariat for Research & Technology at the Greek Ministry of Education, Research and Religious Affairs.
GSRT have allocated € 1.5 M to the new ACT Call and the ACT consortium are very happy that Greece has joined the call. This makes it possible for Greek CCS stakeholders to participate in applications to the new call.
GSRT was formally included as new members at the ACT Policy Board meeting 22 May 2018. The Board said that it is fantastic to have GSRT on board!
The contact person from GSRT is Paraskevi Afentaki (pafe@gsrt.gr).
The ACT project ECO-BASE will organise a CO2 utilisation workshop at Sotacarbo’s Sulcis Summer School 2018.
Read more about the Sulcis CCUS Summer School here.
Dr. Constantin-Stefan Sava has been interviewed by the Energy Industry Review about impact, benefits and Challenges related to CCS.
Sava Plays an active role in the ACT Projects ALIGN and ECOBASE. Both Projects are mentioned in the interview.
Read the interview here.
The ACORN Project will host a webinar 20th June 2018 and present a pathway on how to decarbonising the UK. Read more and register here.
The ALIGN Project will host a webinar 5th June 2018 on how CCUS can be an element for large-scale energy storage and Conversion. Read more and sign up at the ALIGN Web Site
All new ACT projects were presented at the workshop. It is expected that the projects will contribute to European deployment of CCS. Read the report from the interesting workshop. The report is available here.
ACT Acorn partners pass first milestone in study to initiate CCS in the UK: The ground-breaking Acorn Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Project has now begun a feasibility study after concluding funding from the European Union’s funding round Accelerating CCS Technologies (ACT). Read press release
The Norwegian-led European Research Area Network initiative "ACT - Accelerating CCS technologies" has selected 8 high quality transnational projects for a total funding of € 38 million.
These are the first projects from this initiative that aims to fund research and innovation projects that lead to safe and cost effective technology for CO2 capture, transport and storage (CCS). The eight projects together cover a broad scope and scale, encompassing all elements of the CCS and CCU chain, legal and social sciences, and studies of scales as large as entire port areas down to the miniature scale of 3D printed solid adsorbents of CO2
The projects have participants from Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey and the United Kingdom.
- CCS is emerging as one of the most promising and required technologies for mitigating global climate change. This initiative aims to put the technology into use in industry faster and on a larger scale, says ACT Coordinator Ragnhild Rønneberg from the Research Council of Norway.
- ACT has already during the 1st call led to enhanced international cooperation and sharing of knowledge between the scientific community, industry, NGOs and public funding agencies in a number of European countries. This is of great benefit to all partners involved in the projects and also for the respective funding agencies in the nine member countries of ACT, says Ragnhild.
- By joining forces and working in the same dedicated direction we achieve better results than the sum of those of individual partners and, we have high expectations of the results coming out during the next three years, Ragnhild concludes.
Responding to a call from the European Commission in December 2014 under the Horizon 2020 Programme on Energy, nine European countries have joined forces and made funds available for research and innovation actions on Carbon Capture, Transport and Storage (CCS). The initiative is called ACT – Accelerating CCS Technologies.
The ambition of ACT is to facilitate the emergence of CCS via transnational funding through accelerating and maturing CCS technology via targeted innovation and research activities. In order to accelerate the CCS implementation in the energy sector and the energy intensive industry sector (such as steel, paper mills, cement etc.) projects with industrial relevance and cooperation have been prioritised.
Funding of €27 million for the projects comes from the nation's existing research and innovation programmes and is topped-up by a financial contribution from the EC of more than € 11 million.
ACT has a broad scope, but underlines the importance of market- and industry-relevant projects. In addition to chain integration, capture, transport and storage, projects including utilisation of CO2 have also been included.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies is necessary and play a vital role in keeping global temperature increases below 2 degrees Celsius, as is also confirmed by scenarios from the International Energy Agency. Further research is needed for the benefit of implementing CCUS in an optimal way. There is a need for more pilot scale projects and focus on full chain elements (incl. a number of technical issues, costs, business models, social and environmental aspects) to enable the successful implementation of CCS in Europe. In parallel policies to implement CC(U)S in the energy and industrial sector are being developed to realise the CO2 emissions reduction.
The European Commission (EC), the European parliament and several of the European countries by themselves, have invested great efforts in driving the debate around climate change goals for 2030. It is recognized that CCS is a significant step in the right direction to achieving climate targets. A successful future for CCS is therefore quintessential not only in the energy, but also in the industry sector.
Oslo, 6 November 2017
Ragnhild Rønneberg
Coordinator ACT
The Research Council of Norway
e-mail: rr@rcn.no
phone: + 47 91 55 86 62
The full report with all presentations included was sumbitted to EU 5 January 2017.
The report is public and available here.
Enjoy and have an interesting reading !
On the margins of GHGT-13 (the biannually held CCS conference series of the IEAGHG, the IEA’s Greenhouse Gas R&D Technology Collaboration Program), the ERA-NET ACT consortium met in a one-day workshop 14 November 2016 at the Swiss Tech Convention Center in Lausanne (Switzerland) with their US-American Department of Energy, Australian (ANLEC R&D) and Canadian (NRCan) counterparts to discuss and share good practices in devising and managing funding schemes for CCS research and innovation projects.
Read the report here.
The picture shows the speakers.
From left: Aage Stangeland (RCN, NO), Nicoleta Dumitrache(UEFISCDI, RO), John Litynski (DoE, US),
Gunter Siddiqi (DETEC, CH), Gerdi Breembroek (RVO, NL), Annette Weiß (PtJ, DE), Noel Simento (ANLEC, AU),
Brian Allison (BEIS, UK), Ragnhild Rønneberg (RCN, NO), Dick Wells (ANLEC R&D, AU) and Tim Dixon (IEAGHG, UK).
Eddy Chui (CanmetENERGY, Natural Resources Canada) was not present whenat the photo-session.
The workshop gathered together 20 people, some of the potential evaluators of ACT
propsals also participated at this workshop.
The stage was set by IEAGHG who recommended a diligent process to define the funding program’s objective and evaluation criteria, and the high added value derived from large-scale and complex CCS projects. Importantly, when executing large and complex CCS projects, there is a continued need for ongoing underlying applied R&D.
Funding agencies adopt variable approaches to funding CCS research. Underlying is a clear understanding of the research and innovation space and the regional needs to advance CCS. Fit-for-purpose funding vehicles range from governmental research programs to not-for-profit companies. Programming is driven by needs and can range from highly specific to very broad coverage. The duration of funding programs range from annually adjustable to multi-year thematic programs.
Technical readiness assessments provide a solid foundation to enable well-defined topical calls. If funding programs are driven by a portfolio of demonstration projects, the solicitation and selection process may be highly targeted. The submission and evaluation process can be tailored to individual projects or range up to highly structured two-stage processes. Proposals are not only evaluated on the scientific and technical merit, but also along organizational criteria and organizational capability.
Cooperative/contribution agreements are the norm for projects that are characterized address technology readiness levels TRL of 4 or higher; grants are rarely given. Agreements are subject to close review and assessment of technical, managerial and financial performance, often with go/no go decisions. TRL drives also the level of monitoring. Project reporting typically involves regular updates of progress and expenses incurred, and may extend to an additional 5 years of reporting beyond project end date. Contracts pay special attention to the protection of the independence of researchers. Intellectual property rights are owned by the researcher and licensed to project.
Dissemination and exploitation of results requires the consideration of the system’s readiness (framed as a reference performance level) in addition to advances in technology readiness. Exploitable results are of particularly high quality from funded research that has a «line-of-sight» to (competitively developed) technology. Results may also find immediate applications in other fields using similar technologies. Facing the research community, there is also heavy emphasis on disseminating results via the learned literature such as journals, webinars and conferences. Post-project assessments and lessons learned feature strongly; multi-lateral joint activities with other funding organizations range from participation as reviewers to coordinated planning and release of solicitations.
ACT Coordinator: Aage Stangeland, The Research Council of Norway
P.O Box 564 N-1327 Lysaker, Norway
Visiting address: Drammensveien 288, 0283 Oslo
E-mail: ast@rcn.no
