Fossil fuels play a vital role in providing energy in the UK and globally. In the UK, we want to be able to maintain fossil fuels as part of a diverse and secure low-carbon energy mix. However, if we are to avoid dangerous climate change, we need to find ways to substantially reduce the carbon dioxide emissions for these sources.
Development and deployment of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is critical to this, as it has the potential to reduce the CO2 emissions from power stations by around 90%, and make a significant contribution towards the UK and international climate change goals.
What is CCS?
CCS is a three-step process which includes:
- capturing the CO2 from power plants and other industrial sources
- transporting it, usually via pipelines, to storage points
- storing it safely in geological sites such as deep saline formations or depleted oil and gas fields.
There are currently three types of capture technology: post-combustion, pre-combustion and oxyfuel CCS.
The individual processes involved in CCS are not novel, but the full chain of technologies (capture, transport, and storage) has yet to be demonstrated together at commercial scale on a power station.
CCS policy
In 2007 the Government launched a competition to build one of the world’s first commercial scale CCS power plants in the UK. The project aims to demonstrate post-combustion CCS on a coal-fired power station with CO2 stored offshore, capturing CO2 from 300MW net (around 400MW gross) of the power station's capacity.
On 23 April 2009 the Government confirmed that any new combustion power station at or over 300 MWe would have to be built Carbon Capture Ready (CCR), which means it should be designed so there are no foreseeable barriers to retrofitting CCS once it is proven.
Here is the Government response to the 2008 consultation on CCR, Consultation: Towards Carbon Capture & Storage. Please also see the draft CCR guidance notes for consent applicants, Guidance on Carbon Capture Readiness and Applications under Section 36 of the Electricity Act 1989: a consultation.
UK support for CCS internationally
We strongly advocate the development and deployment of CCS technology worldwide.
Our support includes the following initiatives:
Consultation – A framework for the development of clean coal
The new clean coal framework confirms our policies on the new regulatory and financial framework to drive the development of clean coal. Any new coal power station will have to comply with the new policy framework. In summary, the policies are:
- No new coal without CCS. A programme of up to four commercial-scale CCS demonstrations, funded by a new CCS incentive, and a requirement for any new coal power station to demonstrate the full CCS chain (capture, transport and storage) at commercial scale.
- A long term transition to clean coal. Our ambition is to see CCS ready for wider deployment from 2020 and for any new coal plant constructed from then to be fully CCS from day one. We expect demonstration plant will retrofit CCS to their full capacity by 2025, with the CCS incentive able to provide financial support. A rolling review process, which is planned to report by 2018, will consider the appropriate regulatory and financial framework to further drive the move to clean coal. In the event that CCS is not on track to become technically or economically viable, an appropriate regulatory approach for managing emissions from coal power stations will be needed.
- The requirement for new coal power stations in England and Wales to demonstrate CCS will be implemented through complementary amendments to the existing regulatory regime for construction and operation of coal power stations, namely: development consent and operational permitting. Draft guidance for applicants seeking development consent for new coal power stations has been published for consultation. For further details see the Consultation on draft supplementary guidance for Section 36 Applications: New Coal Power Stations web page. We will consult in early 2010 on new secondary legislation under the Pollution Prevention and Control Act 1999, that will give the Environment Agency explicit powers to monitor the performance of CCS demonstrations.
Full details are available on the A framework for the development of clean coal: consultation document web page.
Energy Bill 2009-10
On 29 June 2009, the Government launched Building Britain's Future which contained the draft legislative programme (DLP) for the Fifth Parliamentary Session 2009-10. The DLP includes a proposed Energy Bill that would introduce a financial incentive, funded by electricity suppliers, to support up to four CCS commercial-scale demonstration projects.
Reports and research
Two mechanisms have been created to support carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies at the European Union level. A study by the University of Cambridge Electricity Policy Research Group, and sponsored by DECC, identifies a number of key risks in designing the project selection process:
We have also published the following reports to inform our wider thinking on CCS:
Other support for CCS
We have supported smaller demonstration of the component parts of CCS through the Hydrogen Fuel Cells and Carbon Abatement Technologies Demonstration Programme (HFCCAT) scheme, which is now supported by the Environmental Transformation Fund (ETF).
Additionally, the UK Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) considers CCS one of its future technology themes. With a potential billion pound budget for investment across a broad range of low-carbon technologies, the ETI is bringing together Government and some of the world’s biggest companies with a view to accelerating the development of low-carbon energy technologies towards commercial deployment.
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