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Foreword
Rapid man-made climate change is the greatest environmental challenge facing us today. The principal human influence on our climate is emission of greenhouse gases, including CO 2, from our use of fossil fuels.
The Scottish Climate Change Bill will introduce ambitious legislation to reduce these greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050. This will highlight many challenges for Scotland, particularly in terms of addressing our future energy needs and in generating energy efficiently and sustainably in environmentally neutral ways. We will therefore have to adopt new thinking, new solutions, and new technologies, and this presents the opportunity to put Scotland at the forefront of building a sustainable low carbon economy.
A major contribution could be made by the capture and transport of CO 2 from power stations and large industrial sites, to storage in underground reservoirs offshore - thus demonstrating that this technology can play a key part in our sustainable energy future.
The Scottish Centre for Carbon Storage has brought together the expertise of a number of our leading scientists, engineers and technologists from a range of disciplines and organisations to address the potential for, and challenges associated with, carbon capture and storage in Scotland.
A key conclusion of the report is that Scotland has not only the storage capacity but also the geographical context and know-how to become a major hub for CO 2 transport and storage in Europe. Scotland is therefore uniquely placed to benefit from being an early adopter and, through its world class science and technology, to be amongst the leading nations involved in the study of carbon capture and storage, exporting skills and knowledge globally into what could become one of the world's largest energy markets.
This is the most comprehensive study of its type undertaken in the UK and I hope that the report will stimulate further debate on the way forward for Scotland, in terms of carbon capture and storage technologies.
Professor Anne Glover, Chief Scientific Adviser for Scotland.
April 2009.
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