UK launches national carbon capture and storage programme

The UK has set out plans to pursue clean coal technology as a UK growth sector with the launch of an industrial strategy for Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). The government says the sector will be worth up to £6.5 billion and support up to 100,000 jobs by 2030.

The Yorkshire and Humber region, home of Ferrybridge, one of the country’s most polluting coal-fired power stations, has been nominated as the UK’s first low carbon economic area for CCS.

As part of this, £6.3 million was awarded to Scottish and Southern Energy, the utility firm that runs Ferrybridge, as a contribution to a £21 million carbon capture project at the power station.

Announcing the strategy yesterday (17 March) Ed Miliband, the minister for Energy and Climate Change Secretary, said CCS presents a massive industrial growth opportunity for the UK, which has a strong, established and skilled workforce in precisely the sectors needed to get CCS deployed at scale. “We have some of the best potential sites in all of Europe for CO2 storage under the North Sea,” Miliband said, adding, “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.”

As part of the strategy a new Office of CCS has been set up in the Department for Energy and Climate Change.

The CCS Industrial Strategy sets out how the UK aims make the most from its knowledge and skills in engineering, geology and the subsea sector and become a centre for CCS innovation and business.

An Energy Bill currently before Parliament will provide funding for four commercial-scale CCS demonstration projects. Last week the government announced funding for Front End Engineering and Design studies as part of a competition to build one of the world’s first commercial scale carbon capture and storage demonstration plants.

The Ferrybridge carbon capture trial is intended to bridge the gap between various laboratory-scale trials that are under way and the larger-scale projects envisaged by the Energy Bill.  

“An Industrial Strategy for the development of CCS across the UK” is available at the Office of CCS website: http://www.decc.gov.uk/occs