E.ON Awards Carbon Storage Contracts for U.K. Pilot

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--E.ON AG (OTC:EONGY) (Dusseldorf, Germany) has announced its partners for the vital carbon capture and storage (CCS) pilot project at the controversial Kingsnorth coal-fired power plant in Kent, in the southeast of England.

The German utility has confirmed that engineering firms Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (TYO:7011) (MHI) (Tokyo) and Foster Wheeler AG (NASDAQ:FWLT) (Clinton, New Jersey) will collaborate on getting a working CCS installation up and running at its proposed 1,600-megawatt (MW) supercritical plant on the site of the existing Kingsnorth coal-fired facility. This will be the first new coal-fired plant to be built in the U.K. for 30 years.

The partners will carry out the pre-front-end engineering and design (pre-FEED) of a post-combustion carbon-dioxide (CO2) capture plant. MHI's CO2-recovery technology is known as the KM-CDR Process that uses MHI's KS-1 solvent for CO2 absorption and desorption. MHI claims that the company's process requires considerably lower energy consumption than other technologies, and its performance has been field tested. MHI has already supplied the technology to nine commercial plants for CO2-recovery from natural-gas-fired flue gas, and five of those are operational. Eventually, the CCS system at Kingsnorth will allow up to 90% of carbon emissions to be captured.

E.ON is battling to get part of the £1 billion ($1.65 billion) in government funding proposed to support up to four CCS projects at the 300-400-MW level by 2014. Carbon storage is a hot topic in the U.K., which has decided to halt all new coal-fired plant builds unless they come with a 300-MW working CSS system from day one. The government has also mandated that existing plants be retrofitted with CCS systems within five years of the technology being proven, which is estimated to occur by about 2020. For additional information, see related news item from April 29, 2009 - U.K. Cracks Down on Coal-Fired Plants.

E.ON's announcement coincides with the government's release of its three-month consultation into carbon storage earlier this week. For additional information, see related news item from June 23, 2009 - U.K. Carbon-Capture Market May Generate $6.6 Billion a Year.

Regarding its new partners, Dr. Paul Golby, Chief Executive of E.ON UK, said, "We're delighted to have such an experienced team on board. The government has shown clear support for the development of cleaner coal with carbon capture and storage, so we're keen to push forward with as much of the engineering work as possible in order to ensure the capture plant is designed to completely integrate with the proposed new units in line with the consultation."

Kingsnorth is still waiting for approval, and Golby's comments on the new CCS consultation hinted at dissatisfaction with the government's lack of support for E.ON's plans.

"We've already made a commitment to fit capture technology to the proposed new units at Kingsnorth, dependent upon the outcome of the consultation, but that of course also relies upon us being granted approval to go ahead with the project," he said. "What we need to see is a clear framework that will enable the technology to develop both at demonstration-scale and at a commercial level. We simply can't wait for such critical investments to be driven by the carbon price alone. This consultation will determine the role that carbon capture and storage will play in decarbonising the U.K. and, perhaps more importantly, will be crucial on tackling global climate change because, quite simply, without CCS, it's game over."

Just last month, ScottishPower (Glasgow, Scotland) fired up the U.K.'s first CCS system at a working coal-fired power plant, located in Longannet, Fife, on Scotland's east coast. Longannet, with a capacity of 2,304 MW, is the country's second largest coal-fired plant and the third largest in Europe. The 1-MW prototype CCS system from Aker Clean Carbon is a small-scale replica of a full-scale carbon-capture plant that ScottishPower believes will be ready to scale up to the required 300 MW by 2014. For additional information, see related news item from June 3, 2009 - ScottishPower Fires Up U.K.'s First CCS Prototype.

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