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Call for Papers: OGEL Special Issue on "Carbon Capture and Storage"

16 November 2022

Oil, Gas & Energy Law intelligence (OGEL, ISSN 1875-418X, www.ogel.org) invites submissions for a Special issue focusing on 'Carbon Capture and Storage.' The co-editors for this issue are Professor Tara Righetti, Professor of Law and Occidental Chair in Energy and Environmental Policies, University of Wyoming College of Law and School of Energy Resources, and Dr. Matteo Fermeglia, Assistant Professor in International and European Environmental Law, Hasselt University, Faculty of Law.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forecasts that carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) will be among the essential negative emissions and decarbonization technologies to achieving a 1.5-degree limit. The US and EU have acted to accelerate deployment of CCUS through new policies and incentives, including those within the Inflation Reduction Act and the European Commission Communication on Sustainable Carbon Cycles, which provide public funding for projects and which allow users of CCUS to claim federally funded tax credits or to offset emissions within the EU Emissions trading system.

Notwithstanding these incentives, unresolved legal issues may hamper deployment at CCUS at scale. These include operational challenges related to interstate and international transportation of CO₂, environmental assessments, social license and public acceptance, local regulation, conflicts among subsurface uses including mineral development, and coordination of projects across jurisdictional boundaries. Additional challenges relate to the quantification and valorization of CO₂ removals, taxation of CO₂ transport and disposal, and long-term liability. These factors may add complexity and uncertainty to commercial agreements related to carbon capture, utilization, transport, and storage.

This special issue will look at the key issues related to the CCUS, taking a multi-jurisdictional and multi-disciplinary perspective including both onshore and offshore projects. We encourage submission of relevant papers, studies, and comments on various aspects of this subject. Topics of interest include:

• CCUS and international trade, including border carbon adjustments
• Subsurface regulatory issues, including permitting for CO₂ storage infrastructures
• Safety of CO₂ onshore and offshore storage infrastructures
• CCUS projects and carbon pricing mechanisms (e.g., ETS)
• Challenges with cross-jurisdictional projects, including CO₂ pipelines
• CO₂ shipments and offshore storage and international law of the sea
• Policy tradeoffs for combined CCUS applications, such as to waste-to-energy plants and BECCS
• Life Cycle Analysis and quantification of CO₂ Removals
• Encouraging CO₂ Utilization and transforming supply chains
• National CCUS policies and incentives
• Local government authority over project siting, mutualizing state, national and local priorities
• Social license, public perception, and consent-based siting
• CCUS on tribal and indigenous lands
• Environmental Justice and Distributional issues associated with CCUS
• Water and energy requirements of CCUS projects
• Property rights issues including split estates
• Conflicts with mineral development
• Commercial agreements including offtake and financing agreements
• Environmental risks
• Litigation challenges

Papers should be submitted by the end of April 2023 to the editors:

Please CC info@ogel.org when you submit material or have any questions.

The minimum word count of articles should be 5000 words (excluding footnotes, endnotes, appendices, tables, summary etc.). Articles should include summaries (150-200 words). The layout of the articles should conform to OGEL's submission guidelines available at: www.ogel.org/contribute.asp (more information available upon request).

Feel free to forward this call for papers to colleagues who may be interested in contributing to the special issue.

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