Drax CCS pipeline work awarded

National Grid’s CCS arm, National Grid Carbon, awarded the Front End Engineering and Design (FEED) contract to Genesis Oil and Gas Consultants to begin work on identifying how carbon emissions captured by Drax’s proposed White Rose CCS plant can be transported for storage in the North Sea.

Genesis will carry out the risk evaluation and cost estimates as well as the engineering and design work associated with the transportation and storage system.

This contract is another step on the way to demonstrating that CCS has an important part to play in the future energy mix

National Grid director Peter Boreham

This follows the Government’s announcement last December that the £2.2 billion White Rose project could begin its FEED study as part of its CCS commercialisation programme.

White Rose is planned for construction on land adjacent to the existing Drax site in North Yorkshire. It will be a 426MW coal-fired plant with the added ability to co-fire sustainable biomass, and 90% of all the CO2 produced by the plant will be captured and transported by pipeline.

It is being developed by Capture Power, a consortium of Alstom, Drax and BOC. National Grid Carbon is providing the transportation and storage elements for the CCS project.

“We are delighted that Genesis won through this competitive process and are now on board to provide their expertise to plan and develop the project,” said National Grid director of European Business Development Peter Boreham.

“It’s another step on the way to demonstrating that CCS has an important part to play in the future energy mix.”

The onshore and offshore pipeline infrastructure will have the capacity to transport up to 17 million tonnes of CO₂  a year with the White Rose project requiring about 2 million tonnes.  

The CO₂   would then be pumped in liquid form under high pressure into natural rock formations over a kilometre beneath the North Sea seabed for permanent storage.