Qualitative abundance data from micropalaeontological residues from International Ocean Discovery Program Sites U1554, U1555, U1562, U1563 and U1564. Data represents abundance and preservation state of planktonic foraminifera and other sedimentary components from washed residues sieved at > 63 microns. Relative abundances and counts of left and right coiling ratios of selected species of planktonic foraminifera are recorded.

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is a crucial technology to enable the decarbonisation of fossil fuel electricity generation. The UK has considerable potential for geological storage of CO2 under the North Sea and extensive offshore industry experience that could be applied. While initial storage is likely to be undertaken in depleted oil and gas fields, much larger saline aquifer formations are estimated to have sufficient capacity to securely contain 100 years of current UK fossil fuel power plant CO2 emissions. The CO2 Aquifer Storage Site Evaluation and Monitoring (CASSEM) project brings together the experience and different working practices of utilities, offshore operators, engineering contractors, and academic researchers to build collective understanding and develop expertise. CASSEM produced both new scientific knowledge and detailed insight into the CCS industry, developing best-value methods for the evaluation of saline aquifer formations for CO2 storage. Alongside work to assess the storage potential of two saline aquifer formations in close proximity to large coal power plant, CASSEM applied a novel Features, Events and Processes method to explore perceptions of risk in the work undertaken. This identified areas of industry and research community uncertainty and unfamiliarity to enable targeted investment of resource to reduce overall project risk. An openly accessible and flexible full chain (CO2 capture, transport and storage) costing model was developed allowing the CCS community to assess and explore overall costs. CASSEM's work also included the first use of citizen panels in the regions investigated for storage to assess public perception and educate the general public about CCS. CASSEM now plans to apply and further develop the methodologies established to test the viability of using a large offshore saline aquifer to store CO2 from multiple sources, leading to the proving of such a store by test injection of CO2.

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is a crucial technology to enable the decarbonisation of fossil fuel electricity generation. The UK has considerable potential for geological storage of CO2 under the North Sea and extensive offshore industry experience that could be applied. While initial storage is likely to be undertaken in depleted oil and gas fields, much larger saline aquifer formations are estimated to have sufficient capacity to securely contain 100 years of current UK fossil fuel power plant CO2 emissions. The CO2 Aquifer Storage Site Evaluation and Monitoring (CASSEM) project brings together the experience and different working practices of utilities, offshore operators, engineering contractors, and academic researchers to build collective understanding and develop expertise. CASSEM produced both new scientific knowledge and detailed insight into the CCS industry, developing best-value methods for the evaluation of saline aquifer formations for CO2 storage. Alongside work to assess the storage potential of two saline aquifer formations in close proximity to large coal power plant, CASSEM applied a novel Features, Events and Processes method to explore perceptions of risk in the work undertaken. This identified areas of industry and research community uncertainty and unfamiliarity to enable targeted investment of resource to reduce overall project risk. An openly accessible and flexible full chain (CO2 capture, transport and storage) costing model was developed allowing the CCS community to assess and explore overall costs. CASSEM's work also included the first use of citizen panels in the regions investigated for storage to assess public perception and educate the general public about CCS.

Our proposed research is based on cores collected during the recent, and very successful, Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) Expedition 340. The aims of this expedition were to investigate the volcanism and landslide history of the Lesser Antilles volcanic arc, by collecting a number of cores offshore Montserrat and Martinique. As a shipboard planktic foraminifera (single celled calcareous plankton) biostratigrapher (dating sediment cores using the appearances and disappearances of fossil plankton), Deborah Wall-Palmer (proposed PDRA) has access to these cores during the one year moratorium period. Until IODP Exp. 340, the longest continuous record (~250,000 years) of volcanic activity on Montserrat was a 5.75 m core collected to the south-west of the island in 2002, CAR-MON 2. This core revealed a more extensive and complete record of volcanic activity than that available in terrestrial cores. The longest continuous sediment record collected during Exp. 340 extends this record considerably. At 139.4 m in length, Hole U1396C records events back to 4.5 million years ago. The majority of this Hole will undergo stratigraphic analysis at low resolution, which will be carried out by other Exp. 340 scientists (Andrew Fraass, Mohammed Aljahdali). The upper 7 m section of this Hole is estimated to span 300,000 years and is comparable to the time period recovered in sediments for Holes U1394A/B (0 to 125 cm) and U1395B (0 to 30 cm). Holes U1394A/B and U1395B were collected close to Montserrat, in the main path of eruptive material from the Soufriere Hills volcano and contain a high resolution, but interrupted record of volcanic eruptions and landslides. Our proposed research is to provide a high resolution (every 2000 yrs) age framework across the upper ~300,000 year sections of these three cores. This will be achieved by collecting specimens of the planktic foraminifera Globigerinoides ruber and analysing the stable oxygen isotope ratios contained within their calcium carbonate tests (shells). Oxygen isotope ratios provide information about the global ice volume and global climate, and the standard record can be identified world-wide. Correlation to this record can therefore be used to provide an age framework for sediments, which is more detailed than using the biostratigraphic range of species alone. Producing this age framework is essential for achieving the overall aims of Exp. 340 as it will be used, in collaboration with several other Exp. 340 scientists, to reconstruct the volcanic and landslide history of Montserrat. In addition to this, to ensure the conservative use of samples, some further work will be carried out on samples requested from the upper 7 m of Hole U1396C. This will assist in constructing the low resolution stable isotope and biostratigraphic framework for the remainder of this Hole. The majority of this work is being carried out by Andrew Fraass (University of Massachusetts) and Mohammed Aljahdali (Florida State University). We will analyse the upper 7 m of Hole U1396C, at low resolution, for stable oxygen isotopes of the benthic foraminifera Cibicidoides spp. and for planktic foraminifera datum species.

The QICS project (Quantifying and Monitoring Potential Ecosystem Impacts of Geological Carbons Storage) was established to improve our understanding of the potential impacts of CO2 release on the environment and to develop tools and best practice for monitoring sub-seabed CCS reservoirs. To monitor the potential impact of a CO2 leak to surficial benthic megafauna, cages of bivalves (the common mussel Mytilus edulis Linnaeus, 1758 and the king scallop Pecten maximus (Linnaeus, 1758)) were deployed at the gas release site and at a reference site in the QICS experiment - both within Ardmucknish Bay, Oban, Scotland. Replicate individuals were sampled at six time points over a 125-day period, which spanned both the 37-day injection and recovery phases of the experiment, in order to establish impacts to molecular physiology. Samples of bivalves were also simultaneously sampled from a reference site within the bay in order to contrast changes in physiology induced by the gas release with naturally variability in the physiological performance of both species. There was no evidence of gene regulation of either selected carbonic anhydrases (CAx genes) or the alpha subunit of sodium potassium ATPAses (ATP1A genes) in individual bivalves collected from the CO2 gas release site, in either species. In the common mussel Mytilus edulis there was only evidence for changes with time in the expression of genes coding for different classes of carbonic anhydrase. It was concluded that the effects of the plume of elevated pCO2 on ion-regulatory gene transcription were negligible in both species. Pratt et al. 2015. No evidence for impacts to the molecular ecophysiology of ion or CO2 regulation in tissues of selected surface-dwelling bivalves in the vicinity of a sub-seabed CO2 release. International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control. DOI:10.1016/j.ijggc.2014.10.001. QICS project website: www.bgs.ac.uk/qics/home.html.

QICS (Quantifying and monitoring environmental impacts of geological carbon storage) was a program funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), with support from the Scottish Government (May 2010 - December 2014) with two objectives. Firstly, to assess if any significant environmental impact would arise, if a leak from sub-sea, deep geological storage of carbon dioxide occurred. Secondly, to test and recommend tools and strategies for monitoring for (or assuring the absence of) leakage at the sea floor and in overlying waters. This data set provides a short overview of the novel experimental procedure - a world first leakage simulation in the natural environment and describes the experimental set up, sampling strategy including both temporal and spatial details. The data set consists of a pdf containing a text based project and experimental overview, a table outlining the temporal evolution of the experiment, including site selection, set up, baseline, impact and recovery phases and a diagram outlining the spatial sampling strategy. This data set contains an overview document collated by Plymouth Marine Laboratory. This provides the context for a number of specific related QICS datasets submitted to the UKCCS data archive, covering a range of geological, chemical and ecological information. QICS project website: www.bgs.ac.uk/qics/home.html. Blackford et al., 2014. Detection and impacts of leakage from sub-seafloor deep geological carbon dioxide storage. Nature Climate Change 4, 1011-1016. DOI: 10.1038/NCLIMATE2381. Taylor et al., 2015. A novel sub-seabed CO2 release experiment informing monitoring and impact assessment for geological carbon storage. Int J Greenhouse Gas Control. DOI:10.1016/j.ijggc.2014.09.007.

The CASSEM project developed new methodologies, workflows and insights essential for the successful identification and evaluation of safe and effective CO2 storage sites in offshore saline aquifers. The project selected on-shore and/or near-shore sites from which useful analogue data and information was obtained in order to characterise important aquifer and cap rock systems. Such onshore data acquisition enables key information to be gathered (through outcrop and/or borehole sampling) at much lower cost than could be achieved for long-term offshore storage options.

The data consists of a spreadsheet containing rheology data for 39 samples of syrup, containing air bubbles and/or spherical glass particles. These data were used by Truby et al. (2014) to support a model for the rheology of a three-phase suspension. Each sample was placed in the rheometer (concentric cylinder geometry), and the stress was stepped up and then down, taking a measurement of strain rate at each step. Further details of the experiments may be found in Truby et al. (2014). NERC grant is NE/K500999/1. Co-author working with a NERC grant, NE/G014426/1.

During 2010-11, as part of the Carbon Capture & Storage (CCS) Demonstration Competition process, E.ON undertook a Front End Engineering Design (FEED) study for the development of a commercial scale CCS demonstration plant at Kingsnorth in Kent, South East England. The study yielded invaluable knowledge and the resulting material is available for download here. This Key Knowledge Reference Book is the result of the early stages of a Front End Engineering and Design (FEED) study to add a post-combustion Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) facility to a new supercritical coal fired power plant at Kingsnorth following the award of a FEED contract with the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) in March 2010. This study constitutes the first phase of a 3-phase approach to FEED adopted by E.ON UK. The Kingsnorth CCS Project consists of two 800MW power generating units at Kingsnorth power station, a 300MW (net) post combustion carbon capture plant integrated into the power plant with associated dehydration and compression facilities, a 36inch pipeline for transportation of CO2 to the Hewett gas field in the southern North Sea and a new platform at this field with associated injection facilities and wells. The Key Knowledge Reference Book is publicly available to all CCS project developers and other interested parties to ensure the lessons learned from this FEED are disseminated as widely as possible to advance the roll-out of Carbon Capture and Storage. This Key Knowledge Reference Book comprises information provided in the following structure: Chapter: 1 Executive Summary. 2 Content. 3 Table of Acronyms. 4 Project Design. 5 Technical Design - Carbon Capture and Compression Plant. 6 Technical Design - Pipeline and Platform. 7 Technical Design - Wells and Storage. 8 Health and Safety. 9 Environment and Consents. 10 Project Management Reports. Summary commentary on each of the chapters is provided to give both context to the information supplied and to pull out key areas of learning in each section. The Key Knowledge Reference Book is available for download and supporting materials for each chapter are available. Note this dataset is a duplicate of the reports held at the National Archive which can be found at the following link - http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20121217150421/http://decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/emissions/ccs/ukccscomm_prog/feed/e_on_feed_/executive_summ/executive_summ.aspx

During 2010-11, as part of the Carbon Capture & Storage (CCS) Demonstration Competition process, E.ON undertook a Front End Engineering Design (FEED) study for the development of a commercial scale CCS demonstration plant at Kingsnorth in Kent, South East England. The study yielded invaluable knowledge and the resulting material is available for download here. This chapter is devoted to the transportation and injection infrastructure requirements of the Kingsnorth Carbon Capture and Storage development. This encompasses a 36 inch (outside diameter) pipeline which runs onshore for approx 10 km and offshore in the Southern North Sea for 260 km, a platform in the vicinity of the Hewett field location, and appropriate facilities both for the conditioning of CO2 before pipeline entry and the processing of the CO2 stream prior to injection into the sequestration site. The chapter highlights in particular the following areas:- Critical assumptions; Platform Concept Selection; Transport Solution Selection; Pipeline Key Issues; Pipeline Pre-Commissioning; Temperature; Emergency Shutdown; Personnel Safety; Venting; Flow Assurance Modelling. Throughout the execution of the work described in this chapter significant opportunity was taken to ensure that the interfaces from capture (and compression) to pipeline/platform and to wells/storage were managed closely. This was achieved by cross system interface management meetings organized to consider interface issues and to compare issues raised in separate HAZIDs. The purpose of conceptual design has been to identify the problems to be addressed comprehensively by the next stage of FEED and this suite of reports provides valuable insights to the challenges faced. All aspects of establishing an agreed philosophy for design and operation of a storage and transport system for CCS begin with understanding what the initial CO2 flow conditions will be at the interface between the well perforations and the reservoir (i.e. at the sandstone face at the bottom of the well). Further supporting documents for chapter 6 of the Key Knowledge Reference Book can be downloaded.