The Energy Technologies Institute's UK CO2 storage appraisal project (UKSAP)

The purpose of the UKSAP project is to provide a realistic, defensible and fully auditable estimate of the capacity of geological formations below the UK’s coastal waters to store CO2. Drawing on the expertise of the project participants (10 UK organisations) and accessing existing public domain and commercially available data, the £3.9M project has created a web-enabled database and geographical information system (WDG). This covers all the potential storage volume in the North Sea, the East Irish Sea and the central English Channel. The WDG is designed to assist policy makers and potential participators in projects with high level assessments and planning. Storage units in the WDG (several hundred) are described in terms of geographical, geological, geophysical and other data relevant to risks in their use, leading to estimates of their storage capacity and economic profile. The ETI will make the WDG accessible to the public after completion of the project in July 2011. The paper will present the methodology used in creating the estimates and describe high level findings from analysis of the data. The functionality of the WDG will be outlined.