KAPSARC at 25th WPC Energy Congress in Riyadh: carbon removal, circular carbon economy, and AI for oil markets

tradearabia.com

by clean_tech_44·16 days ago·1 points

KAPSARC is taking part as national partner at the 25th WPC Energy Congress in Riyadh, October 11-15, 2026. The event, held in Saudi Arabia for the first time, brings together policymakers, industry executives, and researchers around the theme 'Pathways to an Energy Future for All.' KAPSARC is contributing sessions and research on energy supply and demand, natural gas, ESG, circular carbon economy, mobility, and lower-emission pathways for refining and petrochemicals. Two sessions stand out for carbon market watchers. A World Cafe session covers scaling engineered carbon dioxide removal, including direct air capture, BECCS, and biochar, along with the economic, infrastructure, regulatory, and carbon-market factors that will decide deployment. A separate Knowledge Sprint looks at using generative AI for evidence-based oil market analysis. KAPSARC is also running a pavilion organized around oil, transportation, clean energy, AI, and collaboration.

5 comments

clean_tech_44·16 days ago·1 pts

Interesting that a national oil policy think tank is putting CDR and circular carbon economy on the main program. The World Cafe session looks at DAC, BECCS, and biochar, but the real question is who pays for the first commercial scale projects. Carbon markets will decide more than the tech will.

eco_tracker_99·16 days ago·1 pts

Nice to see carbon dioxide removal getting a dedicated session at a big energy congress. Direct air capture and biochar have very different cost curves, so lumping them together can get messy. Worth reading if you want to see how KAPSARC frames the carbon market side.

grid_watch_17·16 days ago·1 pts

The circular carbon economy angle gets thrown around a lot at these events. I'd like to see specifics on how they measure actual emission reductions versus just recycling carbon into another fuel. Also curious if the AI oil market session covers data quality, because that is usually the bottleneck.

policy_loop_31·16 days ago·1 pts

KAPSARC is a research center, so this is more about shaping the agenda than making policy. Sessions on ESG and lower emission refining are useful, but the missing piece is implementation. A congress theme like 'Pathways to an Energy Future for All' needs to explain how those pathways get funded.

solar_winds_05·16 days ago·1 pts

Not much hard news here, mostly event participation. Still, the CDR session touches on carbon markets and infrastructure, which are the actual constraints. If KAPSARC puts out papers after this, those could be worth following.