Reino Unido : May 20, 2009
After years of deliberation and at least one false start, the UK government has finally endorsed the concept of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) with provision made for the financial support of up to four full-sized demonstration plants which will pave the way for the introduction of a new generation of coal-fired power stations.
There are various CCS technologies available – the first to be installed will use a post combustion approach – although many believe that a pre-combustion route will offer greater advantages. All of the technologies aim to reduce the CO₂ emissions from coal-fired generation by up to 90 percent when compared to a conventional coal fired plant.
Big questions still remain. These are not so much about the capture of CO₂ but revolve around how and where to store the CO₂ once it has been captured and cooled/pressurized to reduce its volume. Geological structures such as depleted oil and gas fields (mainly offshore) have been put forward as the ideal location and in the recent UK budget the Chancellor removed the fiscal barriers to projects that reuse North Sea oil and gas infrastructure for other activities. This still leaves the question of transportation to the storage site, most of which will be remote from the preferred generation site.
National Grid has identified a strategic business opportunity to use part of the redundant capacity in their network to transport the CO₂ under pressure to a suitable location for storage. If a depleted oil or gas field is being used it is likely that pipelines will exist which could be used to reverse flow and re-inject the CO₂ into the depleted reservoirs. All new coal-fired plants over 300MW will have to make provision for the retrofitting of the CCS technology which must occur within 5 years of the technology being commercially and technically proven (as determined by the Environmental Agency).
The first demonstration plant is likely to be the 1,600MW rebuilding of the E.ON power station at Kingsnorth in Kent. This planned application has been met with considerable opposition from protesters who, quite rightly, claim that the CCS technology is as yet untried on anything other than a small demonstration plant.
From a security of supply perspective the UK government, after years of procrastination, has made some significant decisions over the last 12 months with the sale of British Energy to EDF (with Centrica taking a 20 percent stake for £2.3bn) and the approval to construct new nuclear capacity in addition to the support for CCS. This will go some way to bridging the generation gap opening in 2015 with the withdrawal of non-emissions compliant large coal generation plants followed by the retirement of aging nuclear stations.