Do We all Acknowledge the Existence of a Market in International Education? - A Viewpoint from the Academic Cooperation Agencies

The "Academic Cooperation Association" (ACA) is an independent European organisation dedicated to the support, improvement, management and analysis of academic cooperation within Europe and between Europe and other parts of the world. It was created in July 1993 with the legal status of a non-profit-making international association according to Belgian law and a secretariat in Brussels. The founding President was Professor Eduardo Marçal Grilo, then Director of Cooperation at the Gulbenkian Foundation. The members of ACA are major agencies located in European countries responsible for the promotion of international academic cooperation. There is no Portuguese member of ACA at present

Making the macroeconomic case for CCS

The Centre for Energy Policy at the University of Strathclyde argues that the UK’s decision to scrap its CCS commercialisation competition brings into sharp focus an urgent need to consider the economic service role of capture, transport and storage activities

Nudging policymakers : a case study of the role and influence of academic policy analysis

As countries around the world face the monumental challenge of transitioning to low or net zero carbon economies, there is an important opportunity for public policy and political science learnings and models to underpin crucial shifts in policy strategies and decision-making in an arena dominated to date by technical thinking and problem-solving. In this essay we demonstrate how we, as academics working in the fields of political economics and engineering, employed policy science knowledge about building coalitions around polysemic ideas to advance the debate about large scale (industrial decarbonisation) climate change solutions in the UK

How is Planned Public Investment to Enable CCS Likely to Impact the Wider UK Economy?

The UK has made a binding commitment to reach net zero emissions by 2050 and Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is seen as a key component of getting there. In the March 2020 spring budget statement the UK Government committed a minimum spending of £800million to promote the development of CCS and help address the concerns regarding the cost of CCS. Here we find that a Government investment of £1.75billion in critical CO2 transport and storage infrastructure over a 6 year period can be an effective stimulus to the economy while importantly laying the foundations for reducing emissions from key industries over the coming decades. Ultimately, the cumulative 30-year GDP boost associated with the investment equates to around £0.2million of cumulative GDP per £million spent in a time frame up to 2026. Importantly given current COVID -19 related circumstances, the investment can lead to the almost immediate creation of thousands jobs in a number of sectors. Over a 6 year period the job creation associated with the expansion leads to an additional 3,850 full-time equivalent (FTE) jobs in the first year, between 2,250 and 2,670 additional FTE jobs in each of the subsequent 4 years, and 1,700 in 2026. The societal return is the transitory creation of one additional job per £1million spend in the 6 year time frame. As is common with any large public investment, consideration should be given to the subsequent effects on prices and exports which may be constrained as a result. Beyond our analysis, a key question remains how a large-scale operational CCS sector can constitute a fiscally and economically sustainable return to public and private sector investments. Could CCS provide a sustained financial contribution by helping to sustain industrial activity, maintain employment, minimises potential losses in productivity, and prevent offshoring of industries, emissions and jobs while crucially allowing key industries to reduce their emissions in line with targets set out in UK law

Making the Macroeconomic Case for Near Term Action on CCS in the UK? The Current State of Economy-wide Modelling Evidence

Key messages: * Developing an economic narrative on the role of CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage) in the wider economy will help extend the current policy debate to involve a wider stakeholder audience – this is critical if we are to move the discussion forward. * The most compelling narrative at this stage in the UK policy context may be the ‘sustained contribution’ narrative, which focusses on the potential role of CCS in enabling the sustained contribution of sectors where we have already invested, from which we currently realise value, and from which we need to realise growing value. This relates directly to themes in the UK Industrial Strategy. * Two types of industries are particularly relevant to this narrative: the energy-using/emitting industries that may engage in CO2 capture, and the fossil fuel supplying oil and gas industry, where much of the skills, expertise and physical infrastructure that would be required to set up a CO2 transport and storage network already exist. * From our initial exploration of the evidence, we suggest that due to their capital intensity, jobs are difficult to create in CCS-relevant industries, while, due to the strength of their domestic upstream supply linkages, the loss of any one job is likely to have relatively large knock-on negative effects on other jobs. * Experimental work on price pressures suggests important but potentially very different patterns of how and by whom CCS may ultimately be ‘paid for’. Where there may be impacts on the competitiveness of high value industries in some contexts and on consumer energy bills in others, these would have very different economic and political implications

State Aid or Subsidy Control : Ensuring Prosperity in the Race to Net Zero

The UK has set some of the most ambitious emission reduction targets, not only in Europe, but internationally. While targets can easily be set, reaching net zero emissions by 2050, as is now fixed in UK law, will require big changes in the way we produce energy, manufacture products and heat our homes and businesses. If targets are to be met, tough policy decisions will need to be taken by Government to decide which sectors will contribute the most to reducing emissions and when that should take place. Importantly they will also need to decide who pays and predict where societal and economic benefits may be realised

Burst pressure prediction of API 5L X-grade dented pipelines using deep neural network

Mechanical damage is recognized as a problem that reduces the performance of oil and gas pipelines and has been the subject of continuous research. The artificial neural network in the spotlight recently is expected to be another solution to solve the problems relating to the pipelines. The deep neural network, which is on the basis of artificial neural network algorithm and is a method amongst various machine learning methods, is applied in this study. The applicability of machine learning techniques such as deep neural network for the prediction of burst pressure has been investigated for dented API 5L X-grade pipelines. To this end, supervised learning is employed, and the deep neural network model has four layers with three hidden layers, and the neural network uses the fully connected layer. The burst pressure computed by deep neural network model has been compared with the results of finite element analysis based parametric study, and the burst pressure calculated by the experimental results. According to the comparison results, it showed good agreement. Therefore, it is concluded that deep neural networks can be another solution for predicting the burst pressure of API 5L X-grade dented pipelines

Shelter models for consequence and risk assessment of CO2 pipelines

Pipelines are acknowledged as one of the most efficient and cost-effective methods for transporting large volumes of various fluids over long distances and therefore the majority of proposed schemes for Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) involve high pressure pipelines transporting carbon dioxide (CO2). In order to be able to design and route pipelines safely, it is a code requirement that a separation distance, or safety zone, is defined between the pipeline and any habitable dwellings along the route. Safety zones are generally defined on the basis of a Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA). The purpose of a QRA is to assess the risks posed by a pipeline failure to people in the vicinity and to ensure that consistent levels of risk are applied along the pipeline route. The risk levels are normally calculated along a transect drawn perpendicular to the pipeline. These levels are then compared with defined acceptance criteria to determine the safety zone i.e. the distance from the pipeline within which the risk to the public from a pipeline failure is considered to be unacceptable. The calculation of the risk level requires the determination of both the probability of a failure occurring in the pipeline and the consequences of that failure to the population. For natural gas pipelines, existing and accepted QRA techniques can be implemented to define the consequences of failure based on the thermal hazards. However for CO2 pipelines, the consequences of failure need to be considered differently, as they relate to a toxic hazard rather than a thermal hazard. Therefore in order to conduct a consequence analysis, what is required is a determination of the concentration of CO2 to which an individual may be exposed during a release event. This type of data can be generated either using dispersion models. These models will produce a profile of the change in CO2 concentration with time at various distances from the release, see for example [1, 2], that can then be used in the QRA to determine the toxic dose and therefore the level of harm experienced by an individual. However, none of these approaches consider the effect of shelter on the dose experienced by an individual who is within a building at the time of the release or is outside and enters a building to seek shelter. The work described in this paper seeks to address this gap and describes the application of two models ̶ an analytical and a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model ̶ that can be used to determine the effects of shelter on the toxic dose received by an individual during a pipeline release event. The motivation behind this work was: i) to develop a validated and computationally efficient shelter model, which had been tested against experimental data and CFD models, ii) to use both CFD and analytical models to demonstrate how shelter should be considered as part of the QRA procedure for a CO2 pipeline. A description of the analytical model has been published previously [3]. Therefore, the current paper concentrates on an explanation of the development and application of the CFD model. Using a case study scenario for a single roomed building, engulfed by a transient cloud of CO2, comparisons are made between the output of the analytical models and the CFD models for the same scenario. A sensitivity analysis indicates the input parameters that most affect the resultant toxic effects within the building. The paper further demonstrates how both models can be extended to investigate the effects of partial coverage of the building with the cloud of CO2 and the impact of partitions within the building. Predictions of toxic dose are made for both models and it is demonstrated how these results can be used in a QRA analysis. This work has been funded by the UK Carbon Capture and Research Centre within the framework of the S-Cape project (Shelter and Escape in the Event of a Release of CO2 from CCS Transport Infrastructure UKCCSRC-C2-179). References [1] M. Molag, C. Dam, Modelling of accidental releases from a high pressure CO2 pipelines, in:  10th International Conference on Greenhouse Gas Control Technologies, Amsterdam, 2011, pp. 2301-2307. [2] J. Koornneef, M. Spruijt, M. Molag, A. Ramírez, W. Turkenburg, A. Faaij, Quantitative risk assessment of CO2 transport by pipelines - A review of uncertainties and their impacts, Journal of Hazardous Materials, 177 (2010) 12-27. [3] C.J.Lyons, J.M.Race, H.F.Hopkins, P Cleaver, Prediction of the consequences of a CO2 pipeline release on building occupants. in Hazards 25: Edinburgh International Conference Centre, Edinburgh; United Kingdom; 13 May 2015 through 15 May 2015. vol. 160, Institution of Chemical Engineers Symposium Series, Red Hook, Hazards 25, Edinburgh, 201

A Net Zero Principles Framework : Fundamental Questions for Public Policy Analysis

The necessity of transitioning to net zero economies is widely recognised by the wider scientific (including social science) community, policymakers, business and the wider public. In response to advice from the Committee on Climate Change (CCC, 2019), the UK Government has set a target for a net zero carbon economy by 2050, with the Scottish Government having lined up with an earlier 2045 target (given Scotland’s resource base and capacity for more rapid decarbonisation). Meeting these commitments requires that different departments of the government can effectively work both with each other, and the wider industry, public and research communities, to determine how best to achieve this transition, securing opportunities for economic and societal gain while minimising any potential negative impacts. This raises a particular challenge in that the required research and knowledge base to support the net zero transition cuts across many disciplines and a diversity of expert and stakeholder communities, where multiple technical ‘languages’ are used, and different perspectives taken in setting and addressing questions. Thus, there is an urgent need to establish common frameworks and languages in setting and addressing the multitude of research requirements in an integrated and informative way. In this brief we consider what such a framework may look like if we take one of the key net zero challenges to be understanding the policy, political economy and societal consequences of any net zero action or ‘pathway’ to be. Here we present a ‘first draft’ of our ‘Net Zero Principles Framework’, with the aim of opening a dialogue across research, policy and industry communities to enable further co-creation