Yorkshire and Humber to spearhead Government's new CCS Industrial Strategy
Peta Hodge
17th March 2010
The Government has named Yorkshire and Humber as the UK’s first low carbon economic area (LCEA) for carbon capture and storage (CCS) and has awarded £6.3 million to a five megawatt (MW) CCS project at Ferrybridge in Yorkshire.
The announcements came as the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Ed Miliband, launched the Government’s new
CCS Industrial Strategy, which highlights the potential for CCS to provide industrial growth in the UK.
They come hot on the heels of the
Government awarding two undisclosed sums on Monday to E.ON and ScottishPower as part of £90 million of
funding to compete to
build the first commercial-scale CCS plant in the UK at Kingsnorth power station in Kent and Longannet
in Scotland, respectively.
CCS
— also known as CO2 sequestration — is a
process whereby CO2 is captured from gases produced by fossil fuel,
compressed and then transported and injected into deep geologic
formations for permanent storage.
The Government has indicated that it wants to see a total
of four CCS demonstration plants up and running in the UK in a bid to
build the first commercial-scale ‘clean coal’ plant in the world.
In today's strategy it estimates the CSS industry could be worth up to £6.5 billion and sustain up to 100,000 jobs by 2030, capitalising on the UK’s expertise in engineering, geology and the subsea sector.
Launching the strategy, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary said: “CCS presents a massive industrial growth opportunity for the UK. We have a strong, established and skilled workforce in precisely the sectors needed to get CCS deployed at scale. And we have some of the best potential sites in all of Europe for CO2 storage under the North Sea.
“Coal is the most abundant worldwide energy resource but it is also the most polluting, so there is no solution to climate change without CCS.”
The Yorkshire and Humber region was today named as the first LCEA for CCS to spearhead the UK’s development of the technology. The region is well served with coal plants and storage capacity for CO2. In October, the Hatfield
power station in Yorkshire receive £164
million of funding from the European Union (EU) to develop a CCS
demonstration plant.
The Government estimates construction of a CO2 transport network serving all the major emitters in the region could bring 55,000 jobs and £2 billion investment to the area.
LCEA for CCS to be led by Yorkshire Forward
The LCEA will be led by regional development agency Yorkshire Forward and will deliver a programme of projects focused on the development of CCS and relevant supporting infrastructure, with industry and academic partners.
Yorkshire Forward’s chief executive, Tom Riordan, said: “We welcome today’s announcement which is a vote of confidence in Yorkshire and Humber’s CCS capabilities.
“As a region we are ideally placed to become a world-renowned CCS location on the basis of the unique geographic and industrial assets, with the UK’s largest cluster of industrial CO2 emissions with proximity to major CO2 stores.
“These assets leave us well-placed to demonstrate and rapidly deploy CCS on a scale that can be matched by few others worldwide.”
£6.3m awarded to Scottish and Southern Energy
Yorkshire and Humber’s LCEA status will be boosted by the £6.3 million awarded today to Scottish and Southern Energy’s (SSE’s) 100 tonne per day capture pilot project at Ferrybridge.
The project, which is being run in collaboration with two other energy companies – Doosan Babcock and Vattenfall – aims to demonstrate the carbon capture element of the process over a two-year period.
Bjarne Korshøj, vice president, head of CCS at Vattenfall, said: “The Ferrybridge plant is the important step in scaling up the CCS postcombustion capture technology from research and development to the commercial plants that we anticipate will follow in the years after 2020.
“The results will be most valuable to us collaborating at Ferrrybridge, but also for the CCS development in general. The world needs CCS to tackle climate change.”
Although Yorkshire and Humber is the first, other regions like Teesside, Merseyside and Thames Valley could also become centres for CCS technology in the future.
To help facilitate the development of the CCS industry in the UK, the Miliband has also announced that, as from today, a new ‘Office of CCS’ would be working inside DECC.
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