Development of the next generation of carbon capture technologies, seen as crucial to helping the UK meet its 2050 climate change targets, is to receive a major boost from the Energy Technologies Institute (ETI), which launched its latest project today. The ETI is working with Costain to deliver the project which will see a carbon capture pilot plant capable of capturing up to 95% of carbon dioxide emissions designed, built, operated and tested by the middle of 2015. The ETI investment means it has now announced more than £100m of projects in offshore wind, marine, distributed energy, buildings, energy storage and distribution, transport and bio energy as well as CCS since it was formed in 2008.
Speaking at the Carbon Capture and Storage Development Forum in London, Energy Minister Charles Hendry said: "Carbon Capture and Storage can significantly reduce CO2 emissions from fossil fuel power stations and will play a crucial role for delivering a secure, low carbon future. "I am very pleased to welcome the ETI’s latest project in CCS, which is a further example of Britain’s global leadership in this important technology. Pilot projects like these will help develop and reduce the costs of the next generation of capture technologies and are an essential step on the road to deployment."
The project will be aimed at pre-combustion carbon capture applications, involving CO2 removal by physical separation and will be split into two parts. The first lasting 16 months and costing £3.5m will provide the front end engineering design for the demonstration unit. Costain will work with the University of Edinburgh and Imperial College, London on the first stage to help understand and optimise performance of the technology. The ETI expects to invest £20m in the second stage as the pilot plant is built, demonstrated and the results analysed. Demonstration is a key element to building user group confidence in the capture element. A potential site has been identified for the pilot plant and will be reviewed and ranked against other options and then confirmed during the first stage of the project.
Dr David Clarke, ETI Chief Executive said: "The ETI’s in-house UK energy system model highlights the technologies, supply-chains and cost implications of implementing engineering solutions to get the UK to its 2050 climate change targets. We identify and invest in technologies and engineering that will have the greatest impact on the overall UK energy system across power, heat, transport and infrastructure. Our strategic modelling points to the top five issues for the UK power sector in getting the country to 2050 as carbon capture and storage, bioenergy, offshore renewables, energy efficiency and nuclear. These all have technology risks which need to be understood and managed if they are to attract investors and industrial suppliers but the immediate technology risks are quite different in each case. For CCS ETI is investing in the critical areas of offshore storage sites in UK waters and reducing the cost of CO2 separation systems. Current technologies significantly increase the costs of capturing CO2 and reduce the power output or increase fuel consumption. This project will develop technology which will reduce the costs and increase performance to allow a full scale commercially viable facility to be ready for power export by 2020. We expect all new build coal fired power stations will require CCS by 2020 and gas-fired power stations will need to be fitted with CCS by 2030."
Martin Land, Power Sector Director from Costain, added: "We are excited at the potential of this innovation, and its contribution to the increased attractiveness of clean fossil generation, both in UK, Europe and wider global markets. The ETI support is essential to accelerate the development by our technology team in Manchester. The ETI is also commissioning a project to develop and demonstrate next generation carbon capture technologies specifically for gas fired power stations. An announcement on who will carry out the work on this project is expected by early 2012. The ETI is a public private partnership between six global industrial companies – BP, Caterpillar, EDF, E.ON, Rolls-Royce and Shell - and the UK Government tasked with developing “mass scale” technologies that will help the UK meet its 2020 and 2050 energy targets. It is concerned with identifying affordable, sustainable and secure energy across heat, power, transport and the infrastructure that links them."
