Scottish Carbon Capture & Storage (SCCS) welcomes today’s announcement that the European Commission has awarded the White Rose CCS Project up to €300 million from its NER300 funding programme.
The award is a further boost for the Yorkshire project, which secured design funding from the UK Government’s Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Commercialisation Programme in late 2013.
Dr Vivian Scott, SCCS, said: “CCS technology is crucial to reducing carbon emissions from power plant and industry across the UK, Europe and worldwide. The White Rose project will demonstrate that the technology can deliver low-carbon power from coal, and will develop a North Sea CO2 pipeline and storage infrastructure that can be utilised by other large CO2 emitters, such as energy-intensive industry, in the Yorkshire and Humber region.
“The NER300 programme was created to support CCS following the European Council’s resolution in 2007 to deliver ‘up to 12 CCS demonstration projects by 2015’. So far, this ambition has struggled to be realised, and only a handful of projects remain in development. We must not lose sight of these schemes – the ROAD project in the Netherlands, the Captain project in Grangemouth and Don Valley in Yorkshire – which, together with White Rose and the Peterhead project in Scotland, have the potential to initiate the development of the North Sea as a globally significant region for CO2 storage.
“EU Member States, the EC and new European Parliament are currently negotiating Europe’s 2030 climate and energy package. But while the EC recognises the need for CCS to help achieve the target of a 40% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030, it does not suggest any specific measures to support it.
“Proposals to strengthen the emissions trading scheme are welcome, but they will not deliver a carbon price sufficient to support CCS alone. Today’s announcement must be followed through with a strong commitment by heads of government to deliver CCS projects on coal and gas power plant, and on industry, and with tailored measures in the EU2030 package.”
Background Information
The White Rose CCS Project is a collaboration of Alstom, Drax and BOC to develop a 450MWe oxyfuel power and CCS demonstration project at the existing Drax Power Station in North Yorkshire. The project will capture around 2 million tonnes of CO2 per year, or 90% of all CO2 emissions produced by the plant. The CO2 will be transported through National Grid’s proposed pipeline for permanent storage in a saline aquifer beneath the North Sea. More details: http://www.whiteroseccs.co.uk/
NER300 is a funding programme managed jointly by the European Commission, the European Investment Bank and Member States. As part of the revised Emissions Trading Directive, 300 million allowances (rights to emit one tonne of CO2) have been set aside to generate funding to subsidise innovative low-carbon energy demonstration projects, including CCS and renewable energy. More details:
http://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/lowcarbon/ner300/index_en.htm
The International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts that CCS will be needed to deliver a fifth of global emissions reductions by 2050, and the European Union’s 2050 Energy Roadmap shows that coal and gas power plant, together with industrial sources of CO2 emissions, must implement CCS by the 2030s in order to meet EU climate goals.
Scottish Carbon Capture & Storage (SCCS) is an independent research partnership of British Geological Survey, Heriot-Watt University, the University of Aberdeen and the University of Edinburgh. Its researchers are engaged in high-level CCS research as well as joint projects with industry, with the aim of supporting the development and eventual commercialisation of CCS as a climate mitigation technology worldwide. www.sccs.org.uk
Contact Details - Indira Mann
+44 (0)7795 882 125 / +44 (0)131 650 0294 [email protected]