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‘Groundbreaking’ UK CCUS projects to lead global carbon cleaning challenge

The UK is set to invest £21.5mn into ‘ground-breaking’ carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) technologies in a global effort to reduce the cost of large-scale CCUS projects.

The UK will join forces with Saudi Arabia and Mexico to lead the international challenge of removing carbon from emissions on a commercially viable scale. The partnership is one of the ‘7 Mission Innovation’ challenges announced in 2015 at the UN’s COP21 conference, and aims to encourage the scale-up of up and coming technology by countries working in collaboration.

The UK’s pledge to provide £21.5mn of funding forms part of the government’s Clean Growth Strategy, which also sets out a wider government commitment to spend up to £162mn to improve CCUS and industrial energy efficiency. The strategy is also intended to maximise economic opportunities for the UK through new technologies and the supply chain.

Commenting on the proposed projects, UK Energy and Clean Growth Minister Claire Perry said: ‘My ambition is for the UK to become a global technology leader in carbon capture, working with international partners to reduce its costs. As the UK has led the debate globally on tackling climate change and pioneering clean growth, we are leading this global challenge with an initial £21.5mn investment in CCUS innovation – a key part of our modern Industrial Strategy.’

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In releated news, Drax has announced that it is to pilot the first bioenergy carbon capture storage (BECCS) project of its kind in Europe, which, if successful, could make the renewable electricity produced at its North Yorkshire power station carbon negative.

The demonstration project will see Drax partner with Leeds-based C-Capture and invest £400,000 in what could be the first of several pilot projects undertaken at Drax to deliver a rapid, lower cost demonstration of BECCS.

‘BECCS could have an important role to play in global efforts to combat climate change because the technology will mean the gases that cause global warning can be removed from the atmosphere at the same time as electricity is produced. This means power generation would no longer contribute to climate change, but would start to reduce the carbon accumulating in the atmosphere,’ states the company.

A report by the Energy Technology Institute in 2016 suggested that by the 2050s BECCS could deliver some 55mn t/y of net negative emissions in the UK – approximately half the nation’s emissions target.

The first phase of the project will look to see if the solvent C-Capture has developed is compatible with the biomass flue gas at the Drax power station. A lab-scale study into the feasibility of re-utilising the flue gas desulphurisation (FGD) absorbers at the power station will also be carried out to assess potential capture rates. Depending on the outcome of a feasibility study, the C-Capture team will proceed to the second phase of the pilot in the autumn, when a demonstration unit will be installed to isolate the carbon dioxide produced by the biomass combustion.

Unlike previous CCS projects Drax has been involved with, this is an early pilot for a new technology. It will examine the potential of a new form of carbon capture, post combustion on biomass, rather than coal.

News Item details


Journal title: Petroleum Review|Energy World

Countries: UK -

Subjects: Policy and Governance, Carbon capture, transportation and storage, Emission control, Climate change

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