CCS competition launches again; Yorkshire project comes to the fore ...

CCS competition launches again; Yorkshire project comes to the fore
The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has launched a new competition for carbon capture and storage (CCS) and published the first UK CCS Roadmap, which sets out the steps that the government is taking to develop a new world-leading CCS industry in the 2020s.
After a couple of false starts and several delays with a competition to fund a full-scale CCS project, the new ‘CCS Commercialisation Programme’, aims to drive down costs by supporting practical experience in the design, construction and operation of commercial-scale CCS with £1bn of capital funding and additional support, subject to affordability, through low carbon Contracts for Difference.
The CCS strategy will also include, says DECC:
£125mn funding for R&D, including a new £13mn UK CCS research centre;
planned long term contracts for difference through Electricity Market Reforms to drive investment in commercial-scale CCS in the 2020s and beyond; and
commitments to working with industry to address other important areas including developing skills and the supply chain, storage and assisting the development of CCS infrastructure.
There will also be a focus on international engagement, in learning from other projects around the world, to help accelerate cost reduction in the UK, adds DECC.
Alstom, Drax and BOC welcomed the new competition, and say they intend to bid for funds through the competition to support the consortium’s proposed CCS project under development on the Drax site in Yorkshire. The consortium has formed a project company, Capture Power to develop its demonstration White Rose CCS Project which, if built, would help drive the formation of a CCS cluster for carbon dioxide transportation and storage as an anchor project, as well as helping develop the promising Oxyfuel CCS technology for other projects in the UK and abroad.
The Humber region offers huge potential to link together carbon-intensive industrial and power plants via a shared pipeline infrastructure, to be provided by National Grid, out into the North Sea, which offers an ideal location to store the region’s carbon dioxide emissions.