Mitigating Environmental Impacts: Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS) and Novel Approaches in the Geo-Energy Sector:
While energy and mineral resources are essential for the functioning of our society, their growing exploitation leads to increasing global environmental impacts. Geochemistry plays a key role in assessing and addressing these effects, from global climate change due to the release of carbon dioxide from fossil resources, to regional subsurface effects resulting from geothermal energy usage or enhanced oil and gas recovery. Carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) is one of the proposed key mitigation strategies to limit global warming to below 1.5 ℃. Multiple techniques are being developed, including injection into old fossil fuel reservoirs, creation of biofuels and mineral carbonation, where weathering of igneous rocks and carbonate precipitation are accelerated to store CO2 in the form of environmentally benign and stable carbonate minerals. Geochemical, biological and physical processes are critical in many aspects of CCUS, including 1) assessment of mineral carbonation potential, reservoir permeabilities and possible migration pathways, 2) development of innovative CO2 capture methods from air, water, or biology, such as direct injection, enhanced weathering and biomineralization, 3) monitoring CO2-fluid-rock interactions and mineralization in the subsurface. Similarly, geo-energy exploitation requires reliable geochemical tools to assess subsurface fluid transport and interaction with reservoir rocks, well casings and microbiology. This session will explore scientific advances and innovations relating to carbon capture, utilisation and storage, including mineral carbonation, as well as the mitigation of environmental impacts relating to geothermal energy, enhanced oil and gas recovery, and unconventional geo-energy applications in general. We invite contributions focusing on laboratory and in situ experimental work, analogue tests, field observations and trials, reaction path and transport simulations, covering geochemical and/or biological approaches, in-situ monitoring technologies, and environmental impact studies around terrestrial and marine geological CO2 storage and other mitigation strategies.