Annex 2
Memorandum from the Natural Environment
Research Council (NERC)
1. The Natural Environment Research Council
(NERC) welcomes the opportunity to comment.
2. NERC is one of the UK's eight Research
Councils. It funds and carries out impartial scientific research
in the sciences of the environment. NERC trains the next generation
of independent environmental scientists. Its priority research
areas are: Earth's life-support systems, climate change, and sustainable
economies.
3. NERC's research centres are: the British
Antarctic Survey (BAS), the British Geological Survey (BGS), the
Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) and the Proudman Oceanographic
Laboratory (POL). Details of these and of NERC's collaborative
centres can be found at www.nerc.ac.uk.
4. BGS has provided input direct to the
Committee. Its submission accompanies this memorandum. The comments
below come from another of NERC's Research Centres, the Centre
for Ecology and Hydrology.
COMMENTS
5. The inquiry addresses the issue of the
technological approach to carbon capture and storage (ie end-of-pipe
capture and storage in geological formations). Terrestrial ecology
and hydrology do not seem immediately relevant to either of these
processes (especially as the geological formations currently being
used are mostly under the sea), however it is important that systems
are set in place to monitor the environmental impacts of the different
processes (including leaks, slow migration and accumulation and
induced seismicity). The impact of local elevation of CO2,
toxicity of chemicals employed in capture (eg monoethanolamine)
and of the infrastructure of capture and transport all need to
be considered, although only relatively few locations may be affected.
6. The inquiry should recognise that:
— CCS is a broader topic than defined
above in that it includes the uptake and storage of CO2
by soils, vegetation and oceans, and the need to capture CO2
released from sources other than static industrial or utility
plants (eg transport, agriculture, etc.).
— There are alternative methods of
capture which include the manipulation of existing land management
systems (eg wood growth as carbon offsets) or the industrial use
of vegetation (eg micro-algae) to produce biomass. Our understanding
of these processes is patchy and changing as research is continuing
(eg carbon loss from soil in England and Wales reported in Nature
September 2005).
— The storage of captured carbon is
influenced by the method of capture and location of storage; for
geological formations gas is usually injected, for oceans either
gas or liquefied gas is used. If natural methods of capture are
employed then the material produced may be stored in the soil
(either through direct capture or addition as charcoal) which
is generally considered to be beneficial to both natural and agricultural
systems.
7. The general concerns for ecology and
hydrology of elevated CO2 at a global scale are well
documented (greenhouse gas effects), but the local impacts are
likely to reflect its acid nature and interaction with other elements.
This must be taken into account in impact assessments for any
development.
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