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We calculate the total cost of building Nord Stream and compare its levelised unit transportation cost with the existing options to transport Russian gas to western Europe. We find that the unit cost of shipping through Nord Stream is clearly lower than using the Ukrainian route and is only slightly above shipping through the Yamal-Europe pipeline. Using a large-scale gas simulation model we find a positive economic value for Nord Stream under various scenarios of demand for Russian gas in Europe. We disaggregate the value of Nord Stream into project economics (cost advantage), strategic value (impact on Ukraine’s transit fee) and security of supply value (insurance against disruption of the Ukrainian transit corridor). The economic fundamentals account for the bulk of Nord Stream’s positive value in all our scenarios.

Energy & environmental science (2018). doi:10.1039/C7EE02342A, Published by RSC Publ., Cambridge

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is broadly recognised as having the potential to play a key role in meeting climate change targets, delivering low carbon heat and power, decarbonising industry and, more recently, its ability to facilitate the net removal of CO2 from the atmosphere. However, despite this broad consensus and its technical maturity, CCS has not yet been deployed on a scale commensurate with the ambitions articulated a decade ago. Thus, in this paper we review the current state-of-the-art of CO2 capture, transport, utilisation and storage from a multi-scale perspective, moving from the global to molecular scales. In light of the COP21 commitments to limit warming to less than 2 °C, we extend the remit of this study to include the key negative emissions technologies (NETs) of bioenergy with CCS (BECCS), and direct air capture (DAC). Cognisant of the non-technical barriers to deploying CCS, we reflect on recent experience from the UK's CCS commercialisation programme and consider the commercial and political barriers to the large-scale deployment of CCS. In all areas, we focus on identifying and clearly articulating the key research challenges that could usefully be addressed in the coming decade., Energy & Environmental Science, 11 (5), ISSN:1754-5692, ISSN:1754-5706

Most climate change mitigation scenarios restricting global warming to 1.5 °C rely heavily on negative emissions technologies and practices (NETPs). Here we updated previous literature reviews and conducted an analysis to identify the most appealing NETPs. We evaluated 36 NETPs configurations considering their technical maturity, economic feasibility, greenhouse gas removal potential, resource use, and environmental impacts. We found multiple trade-offs among these indicators, which suggests that a regionalised portfolio of NETPs exploiting their complementary strengths is the way forward. Although no single NETP is superior to the others in terms of all the indicators simultaneously, we identified 16 Pareto-efficient NETPs. Among them, six are deemed particularly promising: forestation, soil carbon sequestration (SCS), enhanced weathering with olivine and three modalities of direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS). While the co-benefits, lower costs and higher maturity levels of forestation and SCS can propel their rapid deployment, these NETPs require continuous monitoring to reduce unintended side-effects—most notably the release of the stored carbon. Enhanced weathering also shows an overall good performance and substantial co-benefits, but its risks—especially those concerning human health—should be further investigated prior to deployment. DACCS presents significantly fewer side-effects, mainly its substantial energy demand; early investments in this NETP could reduce costs and accelerate its scale-up. Our insights can help guide future research and plan for the sustainable scale-up of NETPs, which we must set into motion within this decade., Environmental Research Letters, 18 (2), ISSN:1748-9326, ISSN:1748-9318