Skip to main navigation Skip to main content
The University of Southampton
Research

The carbon conundrum

Improving confidence in carbon capture and storage

Published:
28 October 2021

Dealing with the billions of metric tonnes of carbon dioxide we produce around the world every year is becoming a race against time to stop temperature increases cause severe environmental damage.

Capturing and storing CO2, then locking it away offshore, is one climate change mitigation strategy that will become big business in the coming years. But can we give the public confidence that this method is safe and will make a significant contribution to reducing carbon emissions?

A team of Southampton researchers played a key role in a major European project – Strategies for Environmental Monitoring of Marine Carbon Capture and Storage (STEMM-CCS) – to determine the viability of safely and securely storing carbon offshore.

The Southampton research team – led by Professors Jon Bull and Rachel James – carried out passive acoustics experiments, which involved monitoring bubbles from a controlled release of CO2 at the seabed. The experiments were conducted in the exclusion zone around the Goldeneye platform in the North Sea. An autonomous underwater vehicle, Gavia, surveyed the seabed and sub-seabed before and during the experiment.

One of the biggest things to happen in the next 20 years will be the large-scale roll-out of carbon capture and storage (CCS) under the seabed, several hundred metres down. A key issue is public confidence in CCS, so it is important to be able to give certainty that in the unlikely event stored CO2 escapes, it can be detected.

Jon Bull - Professor of Geophysics and Associate Dean of Faculty (Research), Environmental and Life Sciences

Read the full story in Re:action, the University’s research and enterprise magazine.

Related Staff Member

Related Staff Member

Privacy Settings