Leading U.K. Carbon Capture Project Cancelled

Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland) -- One of Europe's leading carbon and capture and storage (CCS) projects has been dropped after it failed to win funding from the U.K. government.

Despite topping the European Union's (E.U.'s) list of large-scale CCS projects in line for future funding, the proposed Don Valley project in Hatfield, Yorkshire, was overlooked last week when the U.K. government revealed its shortlist of CCS projects competing to win a share of its €1.2 billion ($1.6 billion) fund for large scale CCS projects. For additional information, see November 2, 2012, article - U.K. Reveals 'Final Four' Carbon Capture Projects.

Project owner, 2Co Energy, has announced that despite promised support from the E.U. it cannot proceed without help from the U.K. government.

Lewis Gillies, CEO of 2Co Energy Limited, explaining: "This is truly disappointing news for the Doncaster area where we would have built this plant and for our world-class project team working to deliver it. We will complete the current phase of the project and meet the knowledge-share obligations of our existing EEPR funding from the E.U. but we cannot take this project further without funding from the U.K. government. In the meantime, we are trying to come to terms with how the U.K.'s most advanced project that has twice been selected by the EU for funding and is currently sitting as Europe's top ranked project has not even made it to the UK's shortlist."

In July, the 650 MW Don Valley project in south Yorkshire topped the list of European CCS projects, competing for an estimated €337 million share of the €1.3 billion funding pot available in the EU's NER300 programme.

The integrated gas combined-cycle (IGCC) Don Valley power plant aims to capture up to 90% of its 5 million tonnes of CO2 emissions each year. The power station is expected to cost about €3.6 billion ($4.7 billion) to construct. The project aimed to pipe the captured CO2 offshore to depleted U.K. oil fields and, according to 2Co Energy, use it to recover millions of barrels of 'hard to reach' oil in a process known as Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR).

At the end of last year, German gases and engineering company BOC Group took a 15% stake in the Don Valley Project. For additional information, see November 10, 2011, article - Leading UK Carbon-Capture Storage Project Advances

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