BIGCCS Annual Report 2015: Accelerating CCS

2015 is the 7th year in operation for BIGCCS – International CCS Research Centre that has grown to a powerful centre of excellence; both in terms of the number of people involved and the results produced.

BIGCCS Innovations

This was evidenced during the 8th Trondheim Conference on CO2 Capture, Transport and Storage (TCCS-8) that was held in June. The conference was organized by BIGCCS under auspices of NTNU and SINTEF with 350 participants whereof 185 from abroad, strong industry participation and a renewed momentum in the CCS discussions. BIGCCS contributed with 15 oral presentations and 12 posters, and the achievements was summarized in the TCCS publication BIGCCS Innovations – Measures to Accelerate CCS Deployment.

BIGCCS has produced innovations at high speed, and there has been substantial development since 2014.

Further, the BIGCCS Consortium Day containing technical meetings, poster sessions, General Assembly as well as the Climit-BIGCCS PhD seminar was a great success. All together 30 innovations were presented and discussed during the technical meetings and the poster sessions. The dialogue between experts representing BIGCCS industry partners, researchers, PhD students, professors and representatives from the Climit program taking place during these days, gives renewed motivation, and relevance to the 2016 strategies and work plans.

BIGCCS Education

2015 has been a very productive year for the educational program led by Professor Truls Gundersen, NTNU. Five PhD students defended their thesis in 2015. In total, 26 of the PhDs and postdocs have now completed their work, all with results contributing to the acceleration of the implementation of CCS.

The Education programme in BIGCCS has been a success. 20 PhDs have completed, six are still active. 12 Countries are represented in the international work force of PhDs and Post.docs.

During 2015, the concept study for the Norwegian full-scale CCS project was of great interest for BIGCCS since the issues being discussed in the Norwegian full-scale project are linked to the research areas of BIGCCS. It has been interesting and motivating to note the relevance of the research topics in BIGCCS.

Communicating BIGCCS

In addition to innovations and education, BIGCCS is also expected to deliver publications, both as highly ranked journal papers as well as popular science. BIGCCS has recorded 563 publications in the Cristin database all together. In 2015, 25 journal papers, 59 conference and scientific presentations, 15 blogs, 8 newsletters, 25 media contributions.

BIGCCS has recorded 563 publications in the Cristin database all together

As this annual report shows, the international cooperation with origin in BIGCCS is substantial. In 2015, three Horizon 2020 CCS projects were started, all with strong links to BIGCCS. The projects are Gateway and CEMCAP (hosted by SINTEF), and ECCSEL (hosted by NTNU).

By this I would like to thank the large BIGCCS team for the efforts to address real barriers to CCS, hence the contribution to full-scale CCS deployment.