The sea is, as yet, only used in a limited manner for power generation and the storage of carbon dioxide (CO₂ ) emissions from conventional generation. The opportunities and issues of a large-scale expansion of sea-based operations were discussed at the All-Energy '09 Exhibition and Conference in Aberdeen, Scotland, U.K., and now we examine them as well as the implications for IT.

• Expansion of offshore activities for power generation and carbon storage is inevitable if European nations are to meet greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction targets.
• Funding at the levels needed to develop large-scale generation and carbon capture, as well as storage and offshore generation solutions, is a barrier to progress.
• Existing IT solutions for power supply can be adapted to meet the operational challenges presented by carbon capture and storage (CCS) and offshore generation.
• Utilities will increasingly form partnership arrangements with offshore engineering and supply chain organizations to assist in offshore development and operations.

• Identify the current applications that are likely to be impacted by offshore development and operations, and review the implications with vendors.
• Where appropriate, engage with offshore engineering and specialist consulting organizations to grow knowledge of the issues associated with offshore development and supporting IT/operational technology solutions.

For utilities and energy companies worldwide, the legislative and regulatory pressure to deliver on emissions targets is demanding. By 2020, European Union (EU) nations must collectively reduce emissions by at least 20% against 1990 levels, and ensure that 20% of energy consumption is from renewable resources. Many other nations, including the U.S., have also set aggressive policy targets for emissions. However, although Kyoto Protocol mechanisms have been in place since 2005, including the EU GHG Emission Trading System (ETS), based on the current trends in emissions outputs, these mechanisms alone won't deliver the aggressive targets by 2020.

The approaches available to generators worldwide to meet climate challenges, while ensuring that power demands are met, are threefold:

• Build supplemental nuclear generation, providing a relatively low emissions base load solution.
• Build renewable generation at a much higher scale.
• Continue to run existing fossil-fueled thermal generation, but drastically reduce emissions — CCS.

Two of these approaches involve extensive offshore development. For IT, the effects of large-scale offshore generation and CCS should be incremental in functionality and may be some time away. However, demand for these solutions is growing, so becoming familiar with the current state of these business issues will help in the planning process.

European nations have considerable experience in the development of marine-based solutions for CCS and offshore generation. As a result of the oil and gas field development in the North Sea since the 1970s, there is a supply and support infrastructure for offshore developments. A further benefit from the oil and gas industries' activities in the North Sea is the geological knowledge gained from extensive surveys, which is a key factor in the identification of suitable locations for CCS and offshore generation development.

Other regions are also exploring similar offshore solutions; however, based on the experience, existing usable infrastructure and supply chain, Europe will play a leading role in offshore CCS and generation development.

At the All-Energy '09 Exhibition and Conference in Aberdeen, Scotland, U.K., from 20 to 21 May, much of the agenda was driven by potential value and issues associated with exploiting the sea in an attempt to generate power from offshore wind, tidal and wave sources, and to store the CO₂ produced from conventional, fossil-fuel-based thermal generation. This annual European conference focuses on renewable or alternative generation and environmental issues from large-scale, utility-grade deployments to residential solutions. Speakers included representatives from the energy sector, academia, and various national government agencies.

Land-based CCS and renewable generation opportunities are limited. For CCS, the optimal storage solutions are sea-based — either saline aquifers or depleted oil and gas fields. For renewable generation, scale is a key factor when considering investment. Currently, wind is the most-successful source of renewable generation. The number of available and appropriate land-based sites for large-scale installations is falling, while offshore-based sites for large-scale wind-based generation are plentiful. Although nearshore developments can be subject to planning objections, generally, this is more problematic onshore. Beyond wind generation, there are tidal and wave generation solutions.

Governments worldwide recognize that, to meet ongoing power demands, fossil-fueled generation will remain a part of the generation mix for decades to come. During the past year, many nations have committed funds to further establish the viability of CCS through a number of scale demonstration projects. In the U.S., as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, some $3.7 billion has been apportioned to address fossil-fuel-based CO₂ emissions, including CCS. In Europe, a number of pilot or smaller-scale projects are under way in the North Sea, such as Statoil's Sleipner West Field.

CCS has essentially three components:

• Capture: This can be pre- or post-combustion-based, but essentially involves removing CO₂ and compressing and storing it in solution, ready for transportation to a storage facility.
• Transportation: Moving the CO₂ from plant to storage can be via pipeline or via road, rail, or ship before transfer to injection facilities. Pipeline-based transportation is the optimal method in terms of capacity and throughput. In some nations, studies are under way regarding the conversion of the existing natural gas pipeline infrastructure to carry CO₂ . This should reduce the costs associated with the development of a separate, new system for CO₂ .
• Storage: The most-suitable locations in terms of capacity and security are offshore. Recent geological studies of the North Sea have identified sites that are potentially capable of storing tens of billions (10⁹ ) of metric tons of CO₂ . The total EU emissions for all GHGs, including CO₂ , in 1990 (the base year) was the equivalent of around 4.25 billion metric tons of CO₂ . The key point is that the EU's CO₂ storage requirements could be met, many times over, should the North Sea's storage potential be realized.

The capital costs associated with building the required infrastructure are significant. Some industry analysts believe that the cost of developing a new offshore CCS installation is broadly in line with costs associated with developing an oil or gas installation. Joint-venture-type relationships are likely among generators and oil and gas companies, and offshore support organizations are likely as the scale of development increases, business models evolve, and funding issues are addressed. A further cost impact of CCS will be the requirement for additional generation capacity to meet the shortfall associated with the capture process — this can be 20% or more of the pre-CCS capacity of the plant.

For EU generators, managing CO₂ emissions positions is already a daily business function. Enter CCS, and carbon moves from a paper-based traded commodity to a physical commodity with transportation and storage costs, just like oil, natural gas, or chemicals. IT solutions that are likely to be impacted by CCS include:

• Generation optimization: Generation constraints and asset parameters will change in line with the impact of the capacity reductions, maintenance schedules and emissions production.
• Energy trading and risk management: Asset-related parameters, such as availability to the development of new, logistical solutions for the transportation of CO₂ , similar to natural gas, crude or refined products. Risk management reporting will also evolve to monitor and report transportation risks.
• Enterprise asset management systems: New or modified asset management solutions may be required for marine-based assets, for which maintenance and replacement costs are likely to be more significant than for comparable onshore assets. Communication with offshore asset monitoring and control systems is a likely requirement, and offshore oil and gas development will have addressed this issue, so expect the modification of oil and gas installation solutions for CCS purposes.
• Environmental, health and safety (EH&S) systems: New legislative and regulatory reporting requirements associated with the transportation and storage of CO₂ , as well as any requirements associated with operating offshore, will extend the current role of EH&S for generators.

Gartner anticipates the evolution of the above systems to accommodate CCS during the next five to 10 years, in line with the growth in scale of CCS deployments.

The conference also focused on two key areas of offshore generation: marine generation — covering tidal and wave-based generation — and wind generation. Of the three forms of generation, wave and offshore wind generation are variable in nature and largely driven by weather. Tidal generation, however, is more predictable with the ability to generate power on tidal ebbs and flows.

Wind-based generation: Although offshore wind generation isn't new in the EU, the current offshore capacity runs at around 1.5 gigawatts (GW), and about 334 megawatts (MW) were installed in 2008. A further 1.2GW is under construction, with 5.3GW planned for 2013. Nations most active in this development are the U.K., Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark, using the North Sea. Although the potential scalability for offshore wind generation is high and turbine capacities are increasing from 3MW to 5MW and 6MW, material and development costs have increased dramatically. For U.K. developments, costs have risen to around £2.5 million per MW installed today (by comparison, the typical costs for current onshore developments are in the region of £1.4 million per MW installed). The difference is down to the challenges of working at sea, such as the need for specialized installation vessels, the incremental costs of undersea surveys and installation activities. Onshore and offshore wind development has also been impacted by a marked rise in the price of turbines — a function of the demand for renewable developments.

Tidal and wave-based generation: In the 1960s, France deployed a tidal barrage on the Rance River. The facility has a capacity of 240MW, and, under the control of Electricite de France, continues to supply power today. The environmental implications of tidal barrages have limited any wider adoption. In the U.K., a government-sponsored study into a large tidal barrage in the Severn Estuary has shown that such a scheme could supply up to 5% of the current total U.K. demand. The environmental impact of such a scheme, however, although still under review, could be significant in terms of flood risk and the impact on wildlife. Other less-environmentally disruptive generation technologies for harnessing tidal power do exist, perhaps the most developed being subsea tidal turbines. Off the coast of Ireland, in the tidal narrows of Strangford Lough, a twin-rotor 1.2MW turbine developed by Marine Current Turbines (MCT) has been in operation since 2008. The engineering difficulties associated with working offshore and in a strong tidal flow have been overcome. As with other offshore generation technologies, only through scale can installations deliver economic returns. MCT is now planning a larger-scale development for delivery in 2010-2011 off the U.K. coast with a European utility. With more turbines and a capacity of 10MW, this project is a step on the path toward large-scale tidal arrays.

Wave-based generation, like tidal, is in the early stages of commercial development, compared with wind. One of the larger operational projects is a 2.25MW installation by Pelamis Wave Power , which has been operational since 2008 off the coast of Portugal. Other wave generation technology providers include Aquamarine Power and Trident Energy . Wave energy solutions generally are less complex and expensive to deploy than tidal solutions, and have the advantage of maneuverability. However, wave solutions, like wind, are weather-dependent, and although it's possible to accurately forecast tides for many years, weather forecasting accuracy is only at the level of hours for the purpose of productive power generation.

From an IT perspective, offshore generation is no different from land-based generation insofar as the assets need to be maintained and optimized. However, as with CCS, the fact that these assets are based at sea introduces additional operational risks and costs associated with operating extremes, thereby leading to the increased probability of damage and an increased wear rate. The IT solutions that are most likely to be impacted are, like those linked to CCS, in the areas of asset management, generation optimization, energy trading and risk management, and EH&S. Furthermore, the lack of dispatchability associated with wind-based generation will impact power control systems.

The good news for IT departments is that offshore generation and CCS can be catered to via the modification of existing solutions, with the exception of offshore asset monitoring and control systems and communication technologies. At this stage, the changes to existing solutions look incremental rather than radical. At the moment, most IT-related activity is in the form of scientific and engineering modeling and analyses to identify suitable locations, and to prove the generation technologies with little direct impact on daily IT operations. IT departments should keep a "weather" eye on the various pilot and prototype developments to develop knowledge and to understand the issues that are likely to impact operations downstream.

Although IT may be able to cope with the implications of moving offshore, there are still some fundamental business, operational, and economic issues to be resolved before the scale of development in CCS and in offshore generation can really ramp up. For offshore generation, particularly for wind and wave, where intermittency and lack of predictability are the key downsides, onshore traditional base load (always-on) generation increasingly has to be able to switch on and off to accommodate the variability of supply. Coal-fired or nuclear plants generally aren't designed to do this, introducing the operational risks associated with more-frequent startups and shutdowns. This unresolved issue will only increase in significance as the renewable portfolio grows — remember, 20% of the EU's power is to come from renewable sources by 2020.

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