Kingsnorth bites the dust
21 Oct 2010
London – E.ON has scrapped plans to build a 1,600MW coal-fired power plant, linked to a carbon capture and storage system, at its Kingsnorth site in Kent.
The unit was to have replaced E.ON’s existing coal-fired units at Kingsnorth Power Station with two new high-efficiency 800MW coal-fired units using supercritical technology.
The existing Kingsnorth power station is due to close by the end of 2015 at the latest under the EU’s Large Combustion Plant Directive.
The scrapped plan, was one of only two proposed projects left the UK government’s CCS competition. It has been dropped due to a sustained fall in consumer power demand during the downturn, E.ON said.
The news came as the government published the outcome of its spending review, confirming that it would provide £1 billion in capital expenditure for the first commercial-scale CCS demonstration project.
The remaining bidder, a Scottish Power consortium, remains committed to its CCS project at Longannet, and declared itself on schedule with its front-end engineering and design (FEED) work.
Scottish Power has said that its CCS project could come on stream as early as 2014 by retrofitting CCS technology to its existing coal plant at Longannet.
A ScottishPower spokesperson said: “We welcome the Government’s reaffirmed commitment to making the UK a world-leader in carbon capture and storage.
“This decision will allow the UK to make the most of its leadership position in developing a crucial low-carbon technology of the future, supporting jobs and growth, tackling climate change while keeping the lights on, and delivering critical national infrastructure to secure UK competitiveness.
For its part, E.ON will now concentrate its CCS efforts on a project in Maasvlakte, The Netherlands, said Dr Paul Golby, chief executive of E.ON UK. This, he added, could provide a blueprint for CCS projects in the UK at some stage in the future.
The energy company is currently undertaking a FEED study at the Kingsnorth project and still aims to complete this to gather valuable information on CCS that could be shared more widely.
E.ON UK awarded a Foster Wheeler /Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd consortium a contract to support the FEED for a post-combustion CO2 capture and compression plant proposed as part of the Kingsnorth project.
The plant was to be designed to separate and capture CO2 from flue gas generated by the new coal-fired units, enabling the CO2 to be transported and stored permanently within a depleted gas reservoir under the North Sea.
