Seminar: Fractures in the Subsurface

17/11/2017 - 10:00

Fractures in the subsurface: a look into the reservoir system of the longyearbyen CO2 project

Anthropogenic climate change is one of the major challenges faced by our planet in the 21st century. Since 1750, the atmospheric concentration of the most important greenhouse gasses has increased to unprecedented heights in the last 800,000 years. The most abundant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is CO2. Recently, a binding climate agreement was decided on in Paris with the goal of limiting the global temperature raise to a maximum of 2°C above the pre-industrial level. To reach this goal, a series of actions have to be made: energy efficiency needs to improve, energy saving measurements need to be promoted, the use of high carbon fuels needs to diminish, renewable energy has to be promoted and geo-engineering approaches to decrease the emission of greenhouse gases need to be applied.

One of those geo-engineering approaches is carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). In this approach, the idea is that CO2 is captured at large point-sources of CO2 emission, transported and permanently closed off from the atmosphere. The most promising storage units are saline rock formations at great depth. CCS is globally considered as a technique which is highly necessary to control the global emission of CO2 in the future. Despite this global consensus, the technique is currently only applied in a few large-scale projects.