Carbon capture and storage, that is the collection of carbon dioxide (CO2) from power plants and its injection underground, is an important technology for reducing CO2 emissions to the atmosphere and hence, mitigating climate change. A key aspect of CO2 storage is the injection rate into the subsurface, which is limited by the pressure at which formation starts to fracture. Hence, it is vital to assess all of the relevant processes that may contribute to the pressure increase in the aquifer during CO2 injection. The central aim of this study is to analyse the ability of the near-well region of a saline formation to conduct fluids, using a set of analytical solutions that enable quick and reliable assessment of CO2 injectivity. In this research, the near-well fluid flow was assumed to be a function of the non-Darcy flow parameter as defined by the Forchheimer equation. For the analysis of single-phase flow problems, the analytical solution for the Forchheimer flow in closed domains was derived and an alternative method for applying analytical solutions associated with a single well to multiple well systems was proposed. The CO2 injection process was modelled as a two-phase system where the non-Darcy flow was assumed for the gas phase only, including a novel representation of the spatially varying fractional flow function. The solution for immiscible flow was further developed to model compositional displacements, which enabled analysis of the porosity reduction due to salt precipitation in a near-well region. Finally, the effects of gas compressibility were examined by integrating the analytical model with an iterative algorithm for correcting gas properties. Results showed that in low permeability formations when CO2 is injected at high rates non-Darcy flow conditions are more favourable for CO2 storage than linear flow due to better displacement efficiency. This, however, came at the cost of increased well pressures. More favourable estimations of the pressure buildup were obtained when CO2 compressibility was taken into account because reservoir pressures were reduced due to the change in the gas phase properties. The non-Darcy flow resulted in a significant reduction in solid salt saturation values, with a positive effect on CO2 injectivity. In the examples shown, non-Darcy flow conditions may lead to significantly different pressure and saturation distributions in the near-well region, with potentially important implications for CO2 injectivity.

The nitrogenous compounds which primarily originate from farming practices are nitrate (NO3-), nitrite (NO2-) and ammonia (NH3). Concentrations of these compounds were determined In South Leicestershire streams flowing through agricultural land, one of which received a direct inflow of organic nitrogenous pollutants. These results provided environmentally realistic concentrations for use in lethal and sub-lethal laboratory experiments. Lethal toxicity concentrations of all three compounds were found to exceed levels found in the field. Nitrite was accumulated rapidly into the haemolymph of P. leniusculus to concentrations of up to thirty times the external medium and resulted in a significant depletion of chloride concentration. Elevated external chloride concentrations appear to reduce lethal and sub-lethal effects of nitrite. In P. leniusculus, as in fish, nitrite uptake appears to be associated with branchial Cl-/HCO3- exchange and the nitrite and chloride ions compete for sites of active uptake on the gill. In the un-ionised state (NH3). ammonia appears to diffuse rapidly across the gill epithelium and inhibits both the uptake of sodium from the surrounding medium and its reabsorption from the urine. In the ionised form (NH4+). ammonia also enters the animal, although at a slower rate, possibly via a reversed Na+/NH4+ exchange mechanism. This results in a small imbalance in haemolymph sodium concentrations and apparent changes in permeability. Both nitrite and ammonia appear to rapidly diffuse out of the animal when concentration gradients are reduced, although haemolymph electrolyte balance is not as rapidly redressed. At sub-lethal concentrations of nitrite and nitrate, 'scope for growth' experiments indicate that the overall fitness of the animal is affected. The effects of these nitrogenous compounds on P. leniusculus, reflects those potentially able to act on other freshwater invertebrates which regulate their internal ion balance through their gills.

This study investigates aspects of the UK Low Carbon Transition. The project addresses the impact of devolution upon the structures and processes underpinning the UK's national climate and energy governance framework, as articulated most significantly in law by the Climate Change Act 2008 and its supporting legislation. The study is built around a central Research Question: 'Is the UK's energy decarbonisation process, as established by the Climate Change Act 2008, potentially unworkable in the context of devolution?' The Climate Change Act 2008 imposes rigorous national greenhouse gas reduction targets upon the UK; however, the impact exerted upon the framework's processes and objectives by the presence and influence of devolution remains shrouded in uncertainty: This study enhances knowledge in this area by investigating the nature and influence of devolution. A multi-level governance approach to analysis is adopted, which locates and explores the UK-level governance architecture within its broader EU-UK-devolved multilevel setting. Doctrinal legal analysis is also employed, in particular to interrogate the manner in which the provisions of the Climate Change Act 2008 account for the UK's devolved jurisdictions. A doctrinal 'mapping of powers' analysis is also applied to the UK constitutional settlement in order to determine the precise manner in which the constitutional arrangements have positioned influential decarbonisation-specific energy controls across multiple tiers of government. In the study's latter stages a comparative case study analysis targets Northern Ireland and Scotland and is integrated into the wider critique. The findings reveal that the success of the 'national' UK decarbonisation framework is partially and significantly contingent upon a pronounced degree of substate action that must work in conjunction with robust and progressive co-operation across the UK's multilevels. The latent arrangement of constitutional and other core legal powers across the national and substate tiers imbues the devolved jurisdictions with a greater degree of power and control over national energy decarbonisation processes than had hitherto been realised. The findings also permit recommendations to be drawn concerning the extent to which the latent constitutional and climate powers exposed by doctrinal legal analysis might conceivably be adjusted in the interest of enhancing the UK's cumulative multi-level energy decarbonisation capacity.

Purpose: The Higher Education Statistics Agency requires Higher Education Institutes to reporting their Scope 3 (Travel) carbon emissions effective from January 2015 to show leadership in carbon reporting perspectives. This research contribution is to new knowledge and management processes involves the designing and implementing a hybrid environmental management system(EMS) for Scope 3 (Travel) carbon emissions accountability, developing new quantification tools and reporting by adopting Global Reporting Initiative G4, using Nottingham Trent University (NTU) as a collaborative case study. Research Design and Methodology: The research design methodology evaluates NTU’s EMS using qualitative to quantitative semi structured SWOT and mRating evaluation questionnaires. Developing a Scope 3 (Travel) carbon quantification tool using data derived from a travel survey of NTU’s staff and students and travel data of overseas students and business travel. Determining a UniCarbon travel sustainability index as a key performance indicator for reporting purposes. Findings: SWOT and mRating empirical values computations provided the basis for the development and implementation of a new hybrid EMS particular to NTU. The total amount of Scope 3 (Travel) carbon emissions were: staff and student commute (6,656MtCO2e), business travel (2,674MtCO2e) and overseas students (42,312MtCO2e). NTU’s Scope 3 (Travel) carbon emissions performance index is 0.49, indicating partial emissions sustainability. Contribution to new management practices and new knowledge: This research contribution to new management processes providing frameworks for an efficient adoption of EMS practices for Scope 3 (Travel) carbon emissions accountability. The development of quantification tools, enables benchmarking and implementing emissions abatement policies to meeting the HE Sector’s 2020 emissions targets of 43% of the base year 2005. The UniCarbon index offers a summative reporting empirical measurement of travel sustainability reporting, enabling comparisons for use within the HE Sector that also could be replicated to other industry sectors.

This thesis investigates the determinants of the carbon emission disclosures (CED) in UK higher education institutions (HEI), relationship between such CED in terms of volume and quality and the role of such disclosures on HEIs’ green reputation. The study recognises that HEIs are distinct in characteristics from profit seeking organizations, which has been widely researched in literature. Generalizing the research studies on profit-oriented companies for the majorly publicly funded UK HEIs may mislead any outcome. This study examines three questions. First, what are the determinant factors for the CED by UK HEIs? (Based on stakeholder theory and institutional theory). Second, what is the relationship between CED volume and quality? (Based on stewardship theory). And finally, what is the impact of CED on institutional green reputation? (Based on signalling theory). An initial sample of all available UK HEIs in 2012 was taken to study the carbon emission disclosures made in annual reports. Carbon disclosures in standalone reports were also accounted for. The first part of the research investigates the determinants of CED in annual reports of UK HEIs, with a special concern of the impact of the carbon reduction targets set by the Higher Education Funding Council of England (HEFCE) on such disclosures. A disclosure index was prepared to capture both disclosure categories and types. The relationship between CED and its determinants were examined using TOBIT linear regression analysis, associated by sensitivity tests. Carbon reduction targets by HEFCE were found to have significant positive impact on CED. The results also show that carbon audit and HEI region have significant impact in determining CED volume. The second part of the study explores the relationship between quality and volume of CED in the UK HEIs, with a special concern of the impact of HEFCE carbon reduction target on such disclosures. CED volume has been criticised as being merely wordy and therefore is not good enough. This study explores the decision usefulness of the CED by HEIs i.e. whether the more CED means more useful it is. A framework was developed to measure the CED quality. The relationship between CED volume and quality were examined using Ordered PROBIT regression model. CED volume in annual reports and HEFCE carbon reduction target were found to have significant positive impact on CED quality. The third part explores the impact of CED by UK HEIs on their environmental reputation. The study is distinct in investigating whether and how the HEI CED contributes towards the environmental reputation of the institution. The green score was found from the People and Planet organisation database. All universities having a score were entered into the initial sample. The relationship between green score and CED was examined using robust least squared regression model. CED, Carbon emission and audit were found to have significant impact on green reputation. This study clarifies the impact of CED to motivate the HEIs to engage in such disclosure. This thesis contributes to the existing knowledge by presenting a framework for determinants and consequences of carbon emission disclosure with respect to UK HEIs. There exists a void in research with carbon disclosures by HEIs, which was widely researched for profit seeking organisations. The study adds to the earlier related studies by Godemann et al. (2011), Nejati et al. (2011) and Mazhar et al. (2014) by its own contribution to the disclosure literature. The thesis is distinct in finding causal determinants and impacts different from those found earlier for profit oriented companies and the relationship between the volume and quality of disclosures, which proves the worthiness of the study. Thus, the thesis findings open a fascinating area of investigation and expect to motivate further research in the area.

Climate change and the rapid rise of greenhouse gas emissions are emerging as one of the greatest challenges for the modern world. Organisations are under increasing pressure from governments and stakeholders to reduce carbon emissions from their business operations for climate change mitigation. The Higher Education (HE) sector has significant social, environmental and economic impacts alongside a key leadership role in society and is not exempt from challenging carbon reduction targets, as outlined in the UK Government’s Climate Change Act 2008. In 2005, total HE carbon emissions were 3.339 MtCO2, a rise of 33% since 1990. In 2012-13, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) consumed 7.9 billion kWh of energy and produced 2.3 million tonnes of carbon emissions, which strengthens the role of HEIs in implementing strategic carbon management (SCM). The term ‘carbon management’ is popular in the grey literature and policy landscape from operational perspective, but ‘strategic carbon management’ is an under-researched area, especially in the context of HE sector. Therefore, the central aim of the research is to explore if and how universities are responding to the challenge of climate change by implementing strategic carbon management. The research adopted a mixed-methods approach including content analysis of universities’ carbon management plans (CMPs), semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders, a quantitative survey of the HE sector and an in-depth case study of De Montfort University’s (DMU) carbon management process. The study found that while the HE sector as a whole has demonstrated both policy and strategy commitment to carbon management, the performance of individual universities varies significantly and there is often a need to embed the process more effectively within the whole organisation. Despite a need for improvement, various initiatives distinguish the performance of carbon management in HE, but there is a long way to go. This has been complicated as this research was conducted against the backdrop of seismic policy changes within the HE sector. This shifting policy context is explored and examined and in part explains why financial savings and policies are the most important drivers for SCM. On the other hand, universities are facing barriers such as lack of time and resources (HR), complex buildings stock, estate development and business growth, lack of capital funding, priority to the core business and conflicts, lack of senior management leadership and lack of strong policy framework. This study identified seven factors for successfully embedding SCM. These are: (1) Senior management leadership, (2) Funding and resources, (3) Stakeholder engagement, (4) Planning, (5) Governance and management, (6) Responsibility, and (7) Evaluation and reporting. The research findings are pertinent for HE and broader public sector practitioners both in UK and abroad as successful carbon management is crucial. A strategic carbon management framework is developed for improving and embedding SCM in universities and other public sector and business organisations. The study concludes with practical and policy recommendations as well as directions for the future research work.

Current extreme weather events are evidence of the global climate change and its effects on the environment. Although natural gas is a "greener" fuel compared to solid fuels, its continuous uncontrolled use will increase further the atmospheric CO2 emissions above sustainable levels. Natural gas fired power plants equipped with a carbon capture plant can serve as a short, and medium, term solution to mitigate global warming. Several research studies have shown that post-combustion capture technology is a readily available option to reduce drastically the CO2 emissions. However, its associated energy demand for separating CO2 from the other exhaust gases is high and needs to be reduced. Therefore, recirculating part of the exhaust gases to the inlet of gas turbine combustors increases significantly the exit CO2 concentration which is the driving force of the capture plant. This fundamental study focuses on the implications of the addition of CO2 on fuel-lean natural gas non-premixed flames. The thermal and chemical effects of adding CO2 in the air stream on the flame chemistry, properties, stability and the formation of pollutant emissions represent the main aim of the present study. Two experimental campaigns were performed in this study and in-flame, post-flame and exit measurements of major and minor combustion species and the flame temperature are performed utilising an in-house built combustion chamber. Experimental results concluded that CO2 has a considerable impact on the combustion process even at relatively low dilution levels. However, the effects of the dilution can be controlled in a beneficial way for the efficiency of the combustion systems. Furthermore, the assessment of the performance of a 1D numerical model on predicting the implications of the addition of CO2 on the flame chemistry was part of this study. The numerical results concluded that robust complex combustion models are needed to examine CO2-diluted combustion systems and it is evident that detailed chemical reaction mechanisms are as necessary as the inclusion of the interaction between turbulence and chemistry.

The main purpose of this research is to investigate the climate change and carbon reporting practises of UK FTSE 350 companies. The objectives cover three main areas of investigation including the extent of carbon reporting in the first mandatory year as compared to a voluntary year; the common stories told in companies’ climate change and carbon disclosure; and the dynamic of carbon reporting implementation, including the motivations for disclosure, the problems and issues faced and the disclosure implementation approach. Using storytelling as a theoretical lens, this research explore the content of disclosure, presentation and the motivation for disclosure using the storytelling concept. The data for this study was gathered through two sources: companies’ disclosure in annual reports, sustainability reports, websites and other online reporting; as well as interviews. The findings reveal that the introduction of Mandatory Carbon Reporting Requirements (MCRR) does improve the content and presentation of the companies’ carbon disclosure in annual reports, thus fulfilling the objective of the legislation in encouraging reporting and promoting transparency. The study has also found that the common story themes reported in companies’ disclosures relate to stories of climate change, emissions performance and reduction, and companies’ achievements in climate change and related areas. The findings of the study also demonstrate that maintaining a good reputation, complying with regulation, fulfilling stakeholders’ expectation, improve efficiency and cost saving, and projecting morality of management are the main motivations for climate change and carbon disclosure. It was also found that data collection and accuracy are perceived to be the most challenging issues faced by companies in disclosing their emission data, especially if they operate internationally. Last but not least, the findings show that companies will consult or choose to outsource their carbon disclosure or data collection to third parties when they do not have sufficient in-house resources and expertise.

Climate change has been attributed to greenhouse gases with carbon dioxide (C02) from power plants being the major contributor. Governments and industry worldwide are now proposing to capture CO2 from their power plants and either store it in depleted reservoirs or saline aquifers ('Carbon Capture and Storage', CCS), or use it for 'Enhanced Oil Recovery' (EOR) in depleting oil and gas fields. The research reported will have significant implications on the feasibility for future CO2 transportation for CCS. The United States has over 30 years experience with the transportation of carbon dioxide by pipeline, mainly from naturally OCCUlTing, relatively pure CO2 sources for onshore EOR. CCS projects differ significantly from this past experience as they will be focusing on anthropogenic sources from major polluters such as fossil fuel power plants. The fossil fuel power plants will produce CO2 with varying quality/purity of CO2 depending on the capture technology used. It was concluded that power plant impurities such as Ar, SOx and NOx have never been transported before and that gaseous transportation of C02 should be considered as an option in the .early stages of CO2 deployment. Application of current design and operational procedures to the new generation pipelines may not be deemed feasible due to the effect of anthropogenic CO2 on pipeline hydraulics. This could potentially yield an unsafe pipeline facility, with excessive investment and operating cost. In particular, the presence of impurities has a significant impact on the physical properties of the transported CO2 which affects: pipeline design; compressor/pump power, repressurisation distance and pipeline capacity. The effect of impurities on C02 is generally to raise the critical pressure and increase the two-phase region. An increase in the critical pressure and two-phase area reduces the operating flexibility of the pipeline. Large temperature and pressure drops are associated with the operating pressures and temperatures in the pipeline in the region of two-phase flow. Another alternative being considered for C02 transportation is the re-use of existing pipeline infrastructure. However, it has been identified that some limitation exists due to the operating parameters of these pipeline such as the maximum allowable operating pressure (MAOP), integrity and also the design capacity. Therefore, gaseous transportation may prove to be more feasible in these cases. Nevertheless, in order to meet emission targets, supercritical transport will be required, as it is able to transport the required amount of CO2 in order to meet emission targets due to the size of the infrastructure required. All these effects will have to be carefully considered as it has direct implications for both the technical and economic feasibility of developing a carbon dioxide pipeline infrastructure both in the UK and internationally. Transient power plant operation will lead to changes in the CO2 produced. Therefore, the transportation system must be designed to handle these changes in flow and options such as linepacking should be considered. It has been shown that linepacking gaseous pipelines are more feasible than operating supercritical CO2 pipelines. Therefore, venting needs to be considered as a potential option for supercritical CO2 pipelines. This could in turn incur additional costs due to potential regulatory requirements.

Prior to 2003, ozone modelling in the UK was limited to a few models, mainly covering larger domains. As understanding of the impacts of tropospheric (or ground-level) ozone increased during the late 20th century, reductions in anthropogenic ozone precursors were proposed and implemented throughout Europe. Additionally, the extreme heat-wave of August 2003 resulted in intense ozone episodic conditions which may become more frequent under a changing climate. Hence there was a need to develop ozone models specifically for the UK to improve understanding of ozone, elucidate its origins and assess the impacts of abatement measures. The thesis describes the development of the Lagrangian Edinburgh Lancaster Model for Ozone (ELMO) into two distinct versions which model the summertime ozone climate (ELMO-vl) and specific ozone episodes (ELMO-v2). ELMO-vl has been used to model the UK's ozone climate for 1995 and 2004 and to simulate the impacts of proposed precursor emissions reductions. The most intense episode of 1995 has been reproduced by ELMO-v2 with analysis showing that most of the episode's precursor emissions originated from continental Europe. A new pan-European biological volatile organic compound (BVOC) emissions inventory has been incorporated into both ELMO versions, and used to evaluate the importance of biogenic emissions on UK ground-level ozone concentrations. In typical summertime conditions, about 4% of ozone is attributable to BVOC emission, but this can increase to 37% in episodic conditions; again most is of continental origin. Finally, ELMO-v2 was used to reproduce the intense ozone episode (August 2003) recorded by the TORCH campaign at Writtle; attribution analysis indicated varied origins of ozone throughout the episode. Ozone in the UK is typically VOC~sens itiv e. but ELMO~v2 has shown that temperature rises reduce VOC~sensitivity towards increasing NOx~sen s itivity ; hence NOx emission controls will also have to be considered during the 21st century.