Decc aids Scottish CCS project

Peterhead power station will receive UK government funding to help develop a carbon capture and storage (CCS) facility

The Scottish plant will share £100 million from Decc’s £1 billion CCS commercialisation programme with the Yorkshire-based White Rose project. Peterhead aims to become the world’s first commercial-scale CCS operation at a gas-fired power station.

The project, a joint venture between Shell and SSE, involves retrofitting a post-combustion capture installation at the power plant and store the captured carbon in a depleted North Sea gas field. The new funds will support the next phase of project, known as front-end engineering design (FEED).

The White Rose project, which proposes an oxyfuel CCS process to capture emissions from a new 304 MW coal-fired power station, received the go-ahead from Decc in December 2013 to start its FEED phase.

The Peterhead announcement follows the publication of a report from the TUC and the CCS Association, which concludes that the rollout of CCS technology in the UK would create a market worth £15–£35 billion by 2030, and reduce wholesale electricity prices by 15% a year. It estimates that the total annual economic benefits of CCS to the UK could reach £2–£4 billion by 2030.

MEP Chris Davies said more needed to be done to support the deployment of CCS technology in the UK and Europe. Speaking at the Platts annual CCS conference in Brussels, Davies said 2014 would be a milestone year for CCS, with the first commercial plant at a coal-fired power station due to come on stream.

“It’s just a shame that it will be in Canada rather than in Europe,” he told delegates. He called on the European CCS industry and energy sector to build more political support for the technology.