What Needs to be Done? Environmental Impacts

1. What Needs to be Done? Environmental Impacts Carol Turley and Jerry Blackford Plymouth Marine Laboratory, UK CCS R & D Workshop, Royal Academy of Engineering, 28 February 2008

2. CCS Below Land (important in some countries) – Environmental Detection and Impact • Spectral responses in plants • Environmental impact assessment Early Warning System: Point escapes: -Remote sensing??? • Diffuse escapes: • Carbon isotope analysis • of soil gases

3. Impact of CO2 Release from UK Subsea CCS 6-7 • Key Questions: • Time and space scales, quantities of any CO2 release, dispersion rate, zones of impact? • Impacts on biology and biogeochemical cycles? • Impacts on ecosystems? • Recovery rate? • Can we monitor and survey for change? • Relative environmental benefits and risks of CCS? • What are the economic risks, costs and benefits? • What are the public perception and regulatory issues? catastrophic gentle Moored buoy with satellite link, monitoring pH/CO2 dissolved in seawater Sea/air flux Marine surveys 5 4 Mixing & dispersion velocity 1 Flux to sea 1 5 3 Vol/conc Cabled observatory 2 density 1 d Volume/concentration

4. North Sea is Productive, Diverse and Economically Important Shelf seas very important for: Global productivity Biodiversity Economics Driven by benthic –pelagic coupling!

5. There are Numerous Species Vulnerable to High CO2

6. Scales of Impact, their Adaptation and Recovery Goods & Services Molecular Adaptation & Recovery Space Cellular Ecosystem Impacts, Adaptations & Recovery From genes to ecosystems and their services Organismal Biogeochemistry Population & Community Biodiversity Time

7. Our researchto date suggests the following hypothesis: Fast dispersal and propagation, driven by mixing will limit the impact to the pelagic ecosystem. However benthic systems exposed to significant perturbation would show impacts to some functionally significant biota and recovery of these relatively longer-lived species would be slower. Hence we propose a research program that focuses (although not exclusively) on exposure, impact and recovery in benthic systems, their biodiversity and their ability to cycle carbon and key nutrients.

8. Key Objectives • Develop fine scale dispersion models that will quantify the spatial and temporal perturbation profile for a wide range of leakage scenarios • Using the model results to drive the experimental set up, run a series of experiments that will investigate responses and recovery in different sediment types and species. • Investigate CO2 injection beneath the sediments, (geological leakage and buried infrastructure), • Examine the impacts of potential contaminants of CO2 such as H2S and NOx • Develop detailed system models to scale up and quantify whole system impact, including economic and risk assessments.

9. CCS Proposal Concept Marine Impacts of Leakage from Carbon Capture and Storage Geological leakage probability (BGS) Define probabilities Engineering system leakage parameters & risks (Industry, CCSC) Impact risk assessment (PML/Others) Gas Dynamics in fluids (PML / Others) Define scenarios Spatial Dispersion 3D medium resolution coupled Ecosystem models (PML) Leak dispersion High resolution physical models (POL / ?) Ecosystem impacts Retention of CO2 Complex ecosystem impact and recovery models (PML) define expts Processes, params, functions Impact & Recovery Experiments (PML) Contaminants (CCSC) Processes, params, functions concentrations Dissemination to science and policy

10. Monitoring for Leakage and Impact (or Long Term Retention) • PML has a 30 year history of research into biodiversity and sustainable ecosystems, in measuring ocean pH and pCO2 and more recently assessing the impact of CO2 using our experimental facilities and ecosystem modelling • The future? A cabled under-sea long-term observatory liked to buoyed and satellite communications for: • continuous measurement • rapid detection