Risk Assessment and Mitigation Tools

Abstract

Developing engineering projects involving geological systems, such as the Carbon Capture and Storage technologies (CCS), is a complex task with significant challenges. Often the subsoil is poorly investigated and projects often face difficult management of risk components related to uncertainties in the geological environment. Understanding and assessing the environmental risks in these projects should provide satisfactory answers to questions regarding whether CO2 can leak and what would happen, specifically regarding the consequences for safety, health and the environment. It is worth noting the importance of giving an adequate answer to these questions, among other reasons, due to its influence on the public acceptance of this technology. There is a clear relationship between the early estimation of environmental risks and the social acceptance of technologies. This allows overcome both mistrust and erroneous concepts that citizens could have in relations to them. As indicated in Guide 1 for the application of the European CCS Directive, the environmentally safe management of CO2 geological storage must be a fundamental objective in any project associated with CCS processes. All this has to be integrated with monitoring strategies for verifying the behavior of the site.