Abstract for submission to 11th IEA GHG International Conference on Greenhouse Gas Control Technologies. Conference paper to follow pending selection for oral or poster presentation. Abstract covers the GA-ACCA21 China Australia Geological Storage of CO2 (CAGS) Project run through PMD/ED 2009-2012.

Poster for 2008 CO2CRC Symposium.

A question and answer style brochure on geological storage of carbon dioxide. Questions addressed include: - What is geological storage? - Why do we need to store carbon dioxide? - How can you store anything in solid rock? - Could the carbon dioxide contaminate the fresh water supply? - Could a hydrocarbon seal leak? - Are there any geological storage projects in Australia?

Having techniques available for the accurate quantification of potential CO2 surface leaks from geological storage sites is critical for regulators, public assurance and for underpinning carbon pricing mechanisms. Currently, there are few options available that enable accurate CO2 quantification of potential leaks at the soil-atmosphere interface. Integrated soil flux measurements can be used to quantify CO2 emission rates from the soil and atmospheric techniques such as eddy covariance or Lagrangian stochastic modelling have been used with some success to quantify CO2 emissions into the atmosphere from simulated surface leaks. The error for all of these techniques for determining the emission rate is not less than 10%. A new technique to quantify CO2 emissions was trialled at the CO2CRC Ginninderra controlled release site in Canberra. The technique, termed atmospheric tomography, used an array of sampling sites and a Bayesian inversion technique to simultaneously solve for the location and magnitude of a simulated CO2 leak. The technique requires knowledge of concentration enhancement downwind of the source and the normalized, three-dimensional distribution (shape) of concentration in the dispersion plume. Continuous measurements of turbulent wind and temperature statistics were used to model the dispersion plume.

The 2011 United Nations climate change meeting in Durban provided an historic moment for CCS. After five years without progress, the Cancun Decision (2010) put in place a work program to address issues of concern before CCS could be included under the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and so allow projects in developing countries to earn Certified Emission Reductions (CERs). The program - consisting submissions, a synthesis report and workshop - concluded with the UNFCCC Secretariat producing draft 'modalities and procedures describing requirements for CCS projects under the CDM. The twenty page 'rulebook' provided the basis for negotiations in Durban. The challenging negotiations, lasting over 32 hours, concluded on 9th December with Parties agreeing to adopt final modalities and procedures for CCS under the CDM. These include provisions for participation requirements (including host country regulations), site selection and characterisation, risk and safety assessment, monitoring, liabilities, financial provision, environmental and social impact assessments, responsibilities for long term non-permanence, and timing of the CDM-project end. A key issue was the responsibility for any seepage of CO2 emissions in the long-term (non-permanence). The modalities and procedures separate responsibility for non-permanence from the liability for any local damages resulting from operation of the storage site. In relation to the former, they allow for the host country to determine the responsible entity, either the host country or the country purchasing the CERs. Note that a CER which incorporates responsibility for seepage will be less attractive to buyers. Thus a standard is established for managing CCS projects in developing countries, which will ensure a high level of environmental protection and is workable for projects. It sets an important precedent for the inclusion of CCS into other support mechanisms.

Geological storage of CO2 is a leading strategy for large-scale greenhouse gas emission mitigation. Monitoring and verification is important for assuring that CO2 storage poses minimal risk to people's health and the environment, and that it is effective at reducing anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Eddy Covariance (EC) has been proposed as a long-term monitoring solution for geological storage projects and is considered suitable for monitoring areas 1000 - 100,000 m2 in size. Eddy Covariance is a key micrometeorological technique which has traditionally been used for assessing ecosystem exchange of CO2 in a variety of natural and agricultural settings. It measures the vertical transfer of scalar variables such as CO2 via eddies from upwind of the instrumentation, and correlates the measured CO2 flux to the upwind source area based on several key assumptions. These assumptions include that the upwind source area is homogeneous, flat and uniform, which in turn requires that horizontal gradients in CO2 concentration are zero and that horizontal and vertical gradients in the covariance of CO2 concentration and orthogonal wind directions are zero. Work undertaken at the GA-CO2CRC Gininnderra controlled release facility, where CO2 is released from the shallow subsurface (at 2 m depth), suggests that CO2 leakage in the near subsurface will follow paths of least resistance up to the surface. Similar observations have been observed at the ZERT facility in Montana and CO2 Field Lab in Norway. This leads to CO2 leaks having localised, patchy surface expression, rather than a diffuse wide-scale leak which one typically expects (Lewicki et al. 2010). The implication of this is that the source area for a leak is highly inhomogeneous, meaning the magnitudes of CO2 flux values measured using EC are grossly unreliable. These limitations were discussed in Leuning et al.'s (2008) review on CCS atmospheric monitoring technologies yet are not addressed in much of the recent EC leak quantification literature. This presentation will present findings from the first subsurface release at the CO2CRC facility in Canberra (March - May 2012), where EC data was analysed for application in leak detection and quantification. The CO2 release rate was 144 kg/d. Eddy Covariance was successfully used to detect the leak by comparing CO2 fluxes in the direction of the leak to baseline wind sectors. Median CO2 fluxes in the leak direction were 9.1 µmol/m2/s, while the median background flux was 1.0 µmol/m2/s. Separate measurements taken using a soil flux meter found that the daytime background soil flux had a median flux of 1.8 µmol/m2/s but the peak soil flux over a leak was 1100 µmol/m2/s. Quantification and spatially locating the leak were attempted, but due to the problem of source area inhomogeneity, no substantive progress could be made. How an inhomogeneous source area contributes to 'lost' CO2 from the system, through advection and diffusion, will be discussed, coupled with suggestions for how these parameters can be evaluated in future experimental design. Leuning R., Etheridge D., Luhar A., and Dunse B., 2008. Atmospheric monitoring and verification technologies for CO2 sequestration. International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control, 2(3), 401-414. Lewicki J. L., Hilley G. E., Dobeck L., and Spangler L., 2010. Dynamics of CO2 fluxes and concentrations during a shallow subsurface CO2 release. Environmental Earth Sciences, 60(2), 285-297.

Between 2009 and 2012, Australia and China successfully completed the first phase of a bilateral project that aimed to build capacity in the area of geological storage of carbon dioxide among Chinese researchers, students, policy makers and professionals from academia, government and industry. This paper details the activities and results of the International CCS CAGS project, Phase I.

An atmospheric greenhouse gas (GHG) monitoring station began operation in July 2010 near Emerald, Queensland. The station is part of a collaborative project between Geoscience Australia (GA) and CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research (CMAR) to establish and operate a high precision atmospheric monitoring facility for measurement of baseline greenhouse gases (GHG) in a high priority geological carbon dioxide storage region. The primary purpose of the station is to field test newly developed greenhouse gas monitoring technology and demonstrate best practice for regional baseline atmospheric monitoring appropriate for geological storage of carbon dioxide. The GHG records were to be used as a reference for monitoring of the atmosphere at a CO2 storage project, providing a baseline to quantify typical variations in the area and a background against which any anomalies in the immediate vicinity of the storage might be detected. The site chosen for the GHG atmospheric monitoring station is in the locality of Arcturus, 50 km southeast of Emerald in the Central Highlands, Queensland. Site selection was based on the recommendations of the Carbon Storage Taskforce's National Carbon Mapping and Infrastructure Plan, regional assessments of prospective basins, regional atmospheric modelling, and consultation with key stakeholders. The key driver for the stakeholder consultation group was to support early projects for large scale onshore geological storage. Both the Bowen and Surat basins were identified as potential early mover onshore storage regions by the group and suitable for a regional atmospheric monitoring station. During early 2010, ZeroGen had an active exploration program for geological storage and the site was eventually located approximately 8km upwind from the boundary of ZeroGen's most prospective storage area in the northern Denison Trough, part of the larger Bowen Basin. The Arcturus site and environs is representative of the activities and ecology of Queenslan's Central Highlands and the greenhouse gas signals are likely be influenced by cropping, pasture, cattle production, and gas and coal activities. These same activities are also likely to be dominant sources of greenhouse gases in the Surat Basin. Importantly, the site is secure, can be accessed via an existing road, is not subject to flooding, and has easy access to electrical lines that only required the installation of a transformer on an electric pole. A long lead time for new electricity connections at remote sites (potentially greater than 12 months) was identified as a key risk to the project. Negotiations with the electricity supplier resulted in connection in less than 4 months. An access agreement was negotiated with the landowner to enable the installation of the monitoring station and access to the site.

Abstract: The extent to which fluids may leak from sedimentary basins to the seabed is a critical issue for assessing the potential of a basin for carbon capture and storage. The Petrel Sub-basin, located beneath central and eastern Joseph Bonaparte Gulf in tropical northern Australia, is identified as potentially suitable for the geological storage of CO2 because of its geological characteristics and proximity to offshore gas and petroleum resources. In May 2012, a multidisciplinary marine survey was undertaken to collect data in two targeted areas of the Petrel Sub-basin to facilitate an assessment of CO2 storage potential. Multibeam bathymetry and backscatter mapping (650 km2 over 5,300 line km), combined with acoustic sub-bottom profiling (650 line km) and geomorphological and sediment characterisation of the seabed was undertaken above the CO2 supercritical seal boundary of the sub-basin. Features identified in the high resolution (2 m) bathymetry data include carbonate banks, ridges, pockmark fields and fields of low amplitude hummocks located directly adjacent to banks. Unit and composite pockmarks and clusters of pockmarks are present on plains and adjacent to, and on, carbonate ridges. It is postulated that there are three possible sources for fluids and fluidised gas involved in pockmark formation: deep fluids from the basin, post-Cretaceous intra-formational, layer-bound fluids, and shallow-sourced fluidised gas from the breakdown of organic matter following the Holocene marine transgression of Joseph Bonaparte Gulf.

In the 2011/12 Budget, the Australian Government announced funding of a four year National CO2 Infrastructure Plan (NCIP) to accelerate the identification and development of suitable long term CO2 storage sites, within reasonable distances of major energy and industrial emission sources. The NCIP funding follows on from funding announced earlier in 2011 from the Carbon Storage Taskforce through the National Carbon Mapping and Infrastructure Plan and previous funding recommended by the former National Low Emissions Coal Council. Four offshore sedimentary basins and several onshore basins have been identified for study and pre-competitive data acquisition.