Last week, Bill Wilks and David Whitworth attended the UKCCS Research Community (UKCCSRC) Spring Conference. The theme ‘CCS from Geographically Dispersed Industries’ explored the options available to more isolated communities across the UK to decarbonise their emissions sources, via novel technologies and techniques, or by participation in established decarbonisation clusters in the UK’s major regions.
The conference, held over two days at Cardiff University’s Engineering Department, featured a broad range of excellent talks from subsurface geoscience and engineering, through to sourcing and transport logistics, and finally to policy and economic considerations. The opening Keynote speech was given by Luke Bailey, of the UK Government’s new Department for Energy Security & Net Zero (DESNZ). Luke spoke about the challenges facing the UK during our journey to Net Zero by 2050, but also of the enormous opportunities therein for us to become world-leaders in this nascent industry.
These sentiments were echoed in a speech at the conference dinner given by Ruth Herbert, CEO of the CCS Association (CCSA) – an industry body committed to accelerating the commercial deployment of CCS. Ruth welcomed the government’s recent announcement of £20 billion to support the UK’s emerging CCS industry, and both Luke and Ruth alluded to their excitement around Thursday morning’s announcement of eight Track-1 Projects in the Teeside and HyNet clusters, which will now proceed to Business Model stage.
Bill and David enjoyed many fruitful discussions with both existing and new connections within the CCS & Energy Transition sector. Merlin is looking forward to building on these synergies over the coming months and years and is fully committed to supporting the achievement of the UK’s Net Zero goal.
Merlin Energy Resources offers consultancy services in Carbon Capture & Storage, Natural Gas & Hydrogen storage, Geothermal Energy, and Nuclear Waste Disposal.
