The confirmation of government support for the Protos CCS project near Ellesmere Port in north-west England puts the plant on track to be operational by mid-2029, says operator Encyclis. The plant will capture around 370,000 t/y of CO₂ from the company’s adjoining Protos EfW facility.

Once operational, the EfW facility will incinerate up to 500,000 tonnes of residual waste each year, generating 49.9 MW of baseload electricity for the National Grid.  

The Protos CCS facility will use a post-combustion capture process with an amine solution (MEA) to absorb CO₂ from the EfW plant flue gas after it has been cooled in direct contact coolers (DCC). The CO₂ will then be released from the amine in deabsorber towers, compressed, and transported via a pipeline for storage in depleted gas fields in Liverpool Bay, as part of the HyNet North West decarbonisation cluster.

Olivia Powis, CEO of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association (CCSA), comments: ‘This decision demonstrates how, with the right policy, investment and regulatory framework, CCUS can be deployed at scale to cut industrial emissions while delivering low-carbon power and a net carbon removal solution… Crucially, it will also create skilled jobs and drive economic growth in local communities, proving that climate action and industrial development go hand in hand.’

The decision follows the government’s commitment to invest £21.7bn in carbon capture projects in the UK over the next 25 years, announced last autumn. It also recently signed a final agreement for the UK’s first carbon capture-enabled cement facility at Padeswood, Flintshire, which is to capture 800,000 t/y of CO₂ from an existing Heidelberg Materials cement works.  

According to Enrique Cornejo, Head of Policy at Offshore Energies UK, the two carbon capture projects mark a ‘critical milestone’ in achieving the UK’s greenhouse gas reduction journey.  

He continues: ‘Projects like these are possible thanks to the infrastructure, skills, people, and investment of our integrated offshore energy sector and this is only the beginning. The full carbon capture and storage project pipeline must be constructed for us to meet our greenhouse gas reduction targets. That means securing funding for final investment in the so-called Track 2 clusters around the Humber and north-east Scotland, before the end of this Parliament. It also means creating a viable route to market for other carbon capture projects outside the cluster sequencing process. Industry is ready to deliver, but a clear delivery framework is essential to unlock the full potential of carbon capture and storage in the UK.’

UK EfW sector could go carbon negative by 2035, new report finds

Meanwhile, a new report from Baringa, commissioned by UK EfW operator Enfinium, suggests that the UK’s EfW sector could be carbon negative as early as 2035 – and deliver up to 10mn t/y of carbon removals if CCS technology is ‘deployed rapidly’. It also states that applying CCS to EfW facilities will be necessary for UK power generation to reach net-negative by 2040’.

The report explains that energy from waste can produce carbon removals, or ‘negative emissions’, because around 50% of the UK’s unrecyclable waste consists of biogenic materials – such as food, plants and soiled paper – which have already absorbed CO₂ from the atmosphere. Capturing and permanently storing this CO₂ using CCS prevents it from being released, resulting in a net removal of carbon from the atmosphere.

Government figures predict that over 17mn tonnes of unrecyclable waste will continue to be produced each year into the 2040s. Without EfW facilities, this waste would go to landfill – which emits twice as many emissions as energy from waste, including methane, a potent greenhouse gas that has 80 times the climate warming effect of CO₂.

The report highlights the Climate Change Committee’s warning that work to scale up the roll-out of carbon removals must ‘accelerate now’ in order to achieve a net negative by 2040 target. It goes on to set out five key policy levers that it says will be needed. These are: ending biogenic waste going to landfill, continued government support for energy from waste CCS projects, inclusion of carbon removals in the UK Emissions Trading Scheme, and enabling non-pipeline transport such as shipping and rail.

The report comes as Dr Alan Whitehead leads a government review into scaling engineered carbon removals, for which a call for evidence closed in June.