Australia's CO2 geological storage potential and matching of emission sources to potential sinks

Within the GEODISC program of the Australian Petroleum Cooperative Research Centre (APCRC), Geoscience Australia (GA) and the University of New South Wales (UNSW) have completed an analysis of the potential for the geological storage of CO2. The geological analysis assessed over 100 potential environmentally sustainable sites for CO2 injection (ESSCIs) by applying a deterministic risk assessment based on the five factors of: storage capacity, injectivity potential, site details, containment and natural resources. Utilising a risked storage capacity suggests that at a regional scale Australia has a CO2 storage potential in excess of 1600 years of current annual total net emissions. Whilst this estimate does give an idea of the enormous magnitude of the geological storage potential of CO2 in Australia, it does not account for various factors that are evident in source to sink matching. If preferences due to source to sink matching are incorporated, and an assumption is made that some economic imperative will apply to encourage geological storage of CO2, then a more realistic analysis can be derived. In such a case, Australia may have the potential to store a maximum of 25% of our total annual net emissions, or approximately 100-115 Mt CO2 per year. Crown Copyright (C) 2004 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.