International Summer School on CCS

Earlier this year the IEA Greenhouse Gas Programme in conjunction with Forschungszentrum Jülich held the first annual IEA GHG Summer School on CCS. The event was held at Kloster Seeon, near Munich, Germany between the 19th and 24th August. The meeting was also supported by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, Siemens, Statoil, Schlumberger, E.ON, RWE, and Vattenfall.

The summer school covered every aspect of CCS including technical information on capture, transport and storage of CO2, and non-technical issues such as economics, regulation and public acceptance.

Fifty-five students from over twenty countries were selected to attend the event from over ninety applicants. Students were selected from various backgrounds including engineering, science, economics and politics. All students were either in PhD or Post Doc studies and most were working on topics relevant to CCS.

Over twenty experts from the CCS industry were also in attendance. The experts led the lecture sessions as well as helped with the group work done by the students throughout the week. The experts were also forced to attend the social activities in the evening to help the students with any after hour’s questions they may have and to enjoy a pint or two of the local drop.

The programme for the school included morning lectures followed each day by group work. Each group were given a question relating to the application of CCS and over the course of the week each group had to prepare a presentation which they gave to the rest of the attendees. The presentations were all excellent and showed a great depth of understanding of the issues relating to the CCS industry.

On the final day of the event the experts were called upon to select the stand out students of the week. The best student award was given to the students who contribution to the event was seen to be outstanding. This assessment was made across every aspect of the week, including input to the lectures, the group work and during the social programme.

The students selected will have their costs covered to attend the GHGT-9 conference to be held in Washington D.C in November 2008 and they will also be asked to submit a paper on the work they are currently doing. It was initially intended to select the two best students but this had to be increased to three when the experts could not split the selected students.

The best students selected this year were, in alphabetical order; Elizebeth Heischkamp from Duisburg-Essen University, Patricia Seevam from the University of Newcastle, and Prachi Singh from Twente University. Congratulations.

We are very please to say that the feedback that we have received since the summer school shows that it was very much enjoyed by everyone involved, students and experts alike. The next IEA GHG Summer School will be held in Canada next year. A call for applications will be made in this newsletter closer to the event so if you are interested in attending please keep a look out. For more information about this year’s summer school please contact Brendan@ieaghg.org.