SSE announce plans for UK’s biggest CCS trial

If planning is approved, SSE hopes that construction work for the £21 million trial at Ferrybridge coal-fired power station, near Castleford in Yorkshire, will start next year. It will run through to the end of 2012.

The CCS technology trial, which the power industry technology company Doosan Babcock will collaborate on, will be equivalent to five megawatts (MW) of coal-fired power generating capacity producing 100 tonnes of CO2 per day – hopefully bridging the gap between current laboratory-scale trials and the larger CCS projects envisioned by the Government.

CCS involves capturing the carbon dioxide emitted from the burning of fossil fuels, transporting it and storing it in a secure geological facility.

In April, the UK Government announced that all new combustion power stations over 300 MW in England and Wales will have to be designed ‘carbon capture ready’. It also undertook to deliver up to four demonstration projects using the technology, which has yet to be proven to work on a commercial scale.

ScottishPower is behind a prototype carbon capture unit at its Longannet Power Station in Fife in Scotland and plans to deliver a full CCS demonstration project by 2014. E.ON and Powerfuel are also planning CCS demonstration projects.

SSE said the significance of its project, though, was in "its scale and its ability to demonstrate the operational characteristics of a capture plant on an actual power station."

Ian Marchant, chief executive of SSE, said: "The development of the UK’s largest carbon capture demonstration plant at Ferrybridge will be a major step forward in realising the undoubted potential of CCS technology."

He is also calling for a "two-stage policy approach" on CCS. "We agree that no new coal-fired power stations should be built without full carbon dioxide abatement, but another decision needs to be taken. We believe no coal-fired power stations without full carbon dioxide abatement should be allowed to operate beyond 2030,” he said.

“The attention being focused on next month’s Copenhagen Climate Summit is justifiable but there is also an onus on organisations, companies and individuals to take their own action, and progressing carbon capture technologies and placing a time limit on the operation of coal-fired power stations comes into that category."

SSE is a prime sponsor of Doosan Babcock's oxygen and coal combustion test facility at Renfrew in Scotland. The facility that opened in June, demonstrates Doosan Babcock’s OxyCoal Clean Combustion designed for future installation in new or existing coal power plants.