International Standardization As a Tool for Global Commercial Deployment of Ccus
Carbon Management Technology Conference
2019
Carbon Management Technology Conference 2019 (CMTC 2019)
General Submissions
Session 12: Policy, Legislation, and Permitting Approaches & Country and Regional Climate Change
The overall aim of international standardization is to facilitate the exchange of goods and services through the elimination of technical barriers to trade. ISO/TC265 is a dedicated Technical Committee (“TCâ€) to the standardization of CCS and CO2-EOR. The scope of work is “[s]tandardisation of design, construction, operation, environmental planning and management, risk management, quantification, monitoring and verification, and related activities(..)â€, covering the whole value chain of CCS.
Since the start of ISO/TC265 in 2011, the TC has published eight technical reports and standards. The latest addition is standard “Carbon dioxide capture, transportation and geological storage -- Carbon dioxide storage using enhanced oil recovery (CO2-EOR)â€, which was published 31 January 2019.
For deployment at a global commercial level, CCS and CO2-EOR are still left with regulatory gaps, which the standards may help overcome. One example of such a gap is how to properly quantify and verify the amounts of CO2 being safely stored long-term in order to be eligible for allowances under emission trading schemes around the world. The ISO/TC265 documents aim at closing this gap, enabling e.g. the replacement of natural CO2 with anthropogenic CO2 for EOR purposes.
About 20 countries participate to the ISO/TC265, resulting in e.g. reduced costs, dissemination of knowledge, reduction and allocation of risk and liability, the closure of regulatory gaps and enabling of incentives for CCUS worldwide. Some countries end up implementing the standards into their regulatory framework. Norway has as an example, included a reference to the standards on transport and geological storage into their ongoing full-scale demonstration project, as one of the final pieces to the regulatory puzzle. Mexico, as another example, is participating to the ISO/TC265 process in order to learn and use the standards as potential building blocks in their regulatory framework currently under development.