Alstom, BOC Drax back relaunched carbon capture competition
5 Apr 2012
London – Alstom, Drax and BOC have welcomed the launch of the revised carbon capture and storage (CCS) competition, as announced by the UK government earlier this week.
The companies said they will be jointly bidding for funds through the £1-billion competition to support their consortium’s proposed CCS project under development at the Drax site in Yorkshire.
The consortium has formed a company, Capture Power Ltd to manage the ‘White Rose CCS Project’. This is intended to drive the formation of a CCS cluster for CO2 transportation and storage as an anchor project, and help develop the Oxyfuel CCS technology for other projects in the UK and abroad.
The White Rose CCS project will burn coal with the potential to co-fire sustainable biomass and be fully equipped with CCS technology from the outset.
The 426MW (gross) power plant will be located on land adjacent to Drax’s existing power station, near Selby, North Yorkshire. Around 90% of all the CO2 it produces is to be captured and transported by pipeline for permanent storage deep beneath the North Sea seabed.
The Humber region offers potential to link together carbon-intensive industrial and power plants via a shared pipeline infrastructure, to be provided by National Grid, out into the North Sea for storage.
Capture Power has also agreed to work with 2Co Energy – the developer of the Don Valley CCS project near Doncaster – to help establish a CCS cluster via National Grid’s “Humber Gateway”, which is also being promoted by CO2Sense.
“Yorkshire and Humber is the best placed region in the UK to demonstrate this important technology with its concentration of carbon intensive processes and access to a range of storage options in the North Sea,” said Peter Emery, production director of Drax.
Mike Huggon, managing director of BOC, added: “The commercialisation of CCS as a key clean energy technology is only just starting and the White Rose CCS Project will play an key role in helping the UK meet its carbon reduction targets.”
