Episode 5: How CCUS hubs accelerate decarbonization

Geological storage is critical to the acceleration of industrial decarbonization, hydrogen and carbon dioxide removal – but is there room for all the CO2, is it in the right places and is it ready for commercial use? Susan Kish speaks to Sylvain Thibeau who leads OGCI’s storage working group and has just published the 2021 update of the CO2 Storage Resource Catalogue.

Capturing and storing carbon dioxide is a crucial part of the decarbonization toolkit and momentum is growing fast as companies and governments work on how they can reach net zero by 2050. Susan Kish speaks to Sally Benson, Precourt Family Professor in the Department of Energy Resources Engineering at Stanford University, about the potential for scaling up carbon capture and the realities of storing CO2 safely and permanently.

OGCI is working with the Payne Institute for Public Policy and the World Bank to help them monitor global methane flaring more accurately and to support the public accessibility of satellite data on flaring. Susan Kish speaks to Morgan Bazilian, director of the Payne Institute, about why data transparency is crucial to stopping flaring and why he is working with OGCI to make the data more accessible.

OGCI is working with key countries to identify the role that scaled-up carbon capture, use and storage could play in their national decarbonization strategy, the opportunities it opens up and what policies could accelerate deployment. We talk to Tidjani Niass, CCUS lead at Saudi Aramco who headed up the work on Saudi Arabia.

OGCI’s KickStarter initiative aims to accelerate the emergence of low carbon industrial hubs that leverage carbon capture, use and storage to mitigate emissions. We talk to Martijn Smit, Business Development Manager of Northern Lights, the world’s most advanced hub.

OGCI has started exploring the role it can play in catalyzing natural climate solutions responsibly and on a scale that will create tangible tools to tackle climate change and bring meaningful co-benefits. We talk to Viviana Coelho who leads OGCI’s work in this area.

OGCI has published for the first time a series of position papers, focusing on policy mechanisms and regulations to support methane emissions reduction, CCUS and NCS.  Guest: Paul Jefferiss, OGCI executive committee member and head of policy at bp, Kevin Massy, OGCI executive committee member and corporate sustainability manager at Equinor

OGCI has been working with the UN’s Climate and Clean Air Coalition to get scientifically robust data on methane emissions from different types of oil and gas facilities around the world. We talk to Steven Hamburg, Chief Scientific Officer of the CCAC International Methane Studies, to find out what they have learnt.

Radical collaboration among a wide range of organizations is crucial to achieving net zero. Julien Perez, Strategy Director for OGCI, talks about OGCI’s joint projects with NGOs, industrial partners and academics covering everything from tracking flaring with satellites, to capturing CO2 on deep-sea tankers.

This podcast series takes a look at how OGCI works and what the energy transition really means. What are the hard questions? What are the messy issues? And what are the challenges and opportunities that transition brings?