Teesside industrial CCS plan launched
26 Jan 2015
Firms including BOC and Amec Foster Wheeler gathered in Westminster yesterday to launch their plans for an industrial Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) network in Teesside.
A group of four firms with energy intensive plants on Teesside - BOC, Lotte Chemical UK, SSI UK and GrowHow – have joined forces to form the Teesside Collective.
This group aims to establish a case for the development of an industrial carbon capture network for the process industries based on Teesside, with captured CO2 then piped for storage below the North Sea.
In our efforts to create a low carbon world we will also sustain the UK’s process industry
NEPIC chief executive Stan Higgins
The group has been awarded £1 million by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) to develop a business case, and has hired Amec Foster Wheeler to carry out engineering design and cost estimations for the project.
The Teesside Collective used yesterday’s launch event at the House of Commons to reveal that Amec Foster Wheeler’s initial findings indicate that the project is technically feasible.
Retrofitting carbon capture technology to the four anchor projects’ different industrial processes - steel, ammonia, hydrogen and polyethylene terephthalate production – is both technically and operationally feasible, according to Amec Foster Wheeler.
The contractor also assessed Teesside as being well located for the transportation of the carbon to permanent storage facilities under the Central or Southern North Sea.
Teesside is home to five of the top 25 carbon dioxide emitting plants in the UK and it is estimated that a CCS network in the area could capture an initial 5 million tonnes of CO2 per year by the early 2020s.
However, the Teesside Collective has admitted that there is currently “little economic rationale for industry to invest in CCS”, which is why as part of the DECC funding the collective must by this summer submit recommendations for a potential price support mechanism.
Societe Generale has been hired to help deliver this recommendation by assessing financing, commercial, structural and risk issues for the project.
“Industrial CCS is a win-win,” said North East Process Industry Cluster (NEPIC) chief executive Dr Stan Higgins.
“In our efforts to create a low carbon world we will also sustain the UK’s process industry; creating jobs, wealth and a location businesses will want to invest in.”
