ISO/TR 27918:2018 is designed to be an information resource for the potential future development of a standard for overall risk management for CCS projects. The risks associated with any one stage of the CCS process (capture, transportation, or storage) are assumed to be covered by specific standard(s) within ISO/TC 265 and other national and/or international standards. For example, the risks associated with CO2 transport by pipelines are covered in ISO 27913. The scope of this document is intended to address more broadly applicable lifecycle risk management issues for integrated CCS projects. Specifically, the focus of this document is on risks that affect the overarching CCS project or risks that cut across capture, transportation, and storage affecting multiple stages. It needs to be noted that environmental risks, and risks to health and safety should be very low for CCS projects provided the project is carefully designed and executed. Risk identification and management is part of the due diligence process.
A list of acronyms is included in Annex A.
Clause 5 includes an analysis of how a CCS standard could address aspects of risk analysis that apply to all elements of the CCS chain, such as:
- risk identification (identifying the source of risk, event, and target of impact)[1];
- risk evaluation and rating;
- risk treatment;
- risk management strategy and reporting.
Clause 6 comprises an inventory of the overarching and crosscutting risks. These include issues such as:
- environmental impact assessment;
- risk communication and public engagement;
- integration risks between capture, storage, and transportation operators, such as risk of non-conformance of CO2 stream to required specifications;
- integration risks associated with shared infrastructure (hubs of sources, common pipelines, hubs of storage sites);
- risks resulting from interruption or intermittency of CO2 supply and/or CO2 in-take;
- risks associated with policy uncertainty;
- incidental risks from activities related to the capture, transportation or storage processes without being specifically covered in the respective standards (e.g. management or disposal of water produced as a by-product of CO2 storage).
Clause 7 describes implications and considerations for a potential standard on lifecycle risks for integrated CCS projects.
[1]As defined in ISO 31000.