CCS
Capture Readiness Levels
An Olwg Resource Assessment &
Digital Tool Build for The Crown Estate
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Olwg was commissioned by The Crown Estate to help them answer “where is all the CO2 going to come from (for offshore storage)?”, and to help understand the uncertainties surrounding future demand through visual examination of different industrial transition scenarios.
The Crown Estate was looking for ways to accelerate the important fundamental discussions within their organisation, and externally with governmental and development stakeholders.
The Problem
Carbon Capture & Storage (‘CCS’) in the UK is a nascent industry that offers significant possibilities for decarbonisation and job creation. It is technically, commercially and organisationally complex – and the landscape for developing regional capture clusters is quickly evolving. As a large-scale industrial process, CCS plants can also be very expensive and have high internal energy needs (depending on ease of extracting the CO2 from the emission stream) – which can make project economics challenging.
Compared to current industrial CO2 emission levels, there are a number of different projections for capture demand – including the currently-envisaged individual capture development capacities, and the pathway scenario for UK to reach net zero by 2050. These do not fully overlap.
Due to the complexity and evolving nature of the landscape, publishing large reports offers limited scope for helping organisations to quickly absorb and understand the richness of the underlying data. Some key organisations have a remit that covers the whole of UK, while others have a remit focused on a single devolved region, or combinations of.
Key Numbers - UK CO2 Emissions
The Solution
Olwg offered an agile approach to building custom self-serve digital tools, which was founded on firstly framing the customer problem, then demonstrating evolving versions of the models and refining them based on feedback at each review stage.
The deliverables included a set of data tables (which can be imported into GIS systems) and interactive filterable maps and analytic visualisations. These allowed the data and visuals to be filtered for the devolved regions.
Summary
Cost
Competitive proposal delivered on time and on budget.
Timeline
December 2021
February 2022
This custom project was delivered to client requirements in 3 months on budget. The cloud-based web format of the digital tools developed during the project means that they can be easily used by the broader organisation.
This also offers a template for further development of digital web tools covering other regional areas and energy transition technologies.