U.K. Funds Storage Sites for CO2

Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland) - The development of carbon capture and storage (CCS) in the U.K. advanced this month with government funding for finding offshore storage sites.

A grant of €3.2 million ($ 3.9 million) has been awarded by the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) to help attract companies to develop CO2 storage in the North Sea. The award from DECC's Innovation Fund will be overseen by the Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) and be used to identify the next phase of sites under the sea capable of storing CO2 emissions captured from coal and gas-fired power stations as well as heavy industry such as steel and cement factories.

"At the ETI we see CCS as a key enabler of any transition to a low carbon energy system in the U.K.," explained Andrew Green, CCS programme manager at ETI. "The work this project will deliver will build knowledge and, with that, confidence in sites based in U.K. waters to provide an economic case for their further development, for use as a basis for the further expansion of CCS in the U.K.."

ETI will issue a call for proposals by the end of this month with a deadline of 5th February 2015. It expects to award contracts with a view to work starting in Spring 2015. It estimates that developing a storage site from scratch will take 6-9 years.

The government is supporting two large-scale CCS projects in the U.K. It has already offered front end engineering and design (FEED) contract funding for the White Rose and Peterhead projects, worth around €125 million ($166 million). The White Rose Project is an oxyfuel capture project at a proposed new 426-megawatt (MW) co-firing plant next to the giant Drax power plant Selby, North Yorkshire. The Peterhead project in Scotland is the world's first commercial gas-fired CCS demonstration project. Both projects are in the running for the government's €1.2 billion ($1.6 billion) CCS Commercialisation Competition Fund.

Last month, the Global CCS Institute announced that globally, CCS take-up was on "the cusp of widespread deployment". There are now 22 projects currently under construction or in operation, a jump of 50% since 2011, the Institute reported. Earlier this year, the world's first large-scale CCS project started operating at Boundary Dam, in Canada. For additional information, see November 12, 2014, article - Carbon Capture Poised for Global Rollout.

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