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Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) involves capturing the carbon dioxide emitted from burning fossil fuels, transporting it and storing it safely in secure spaces such as geological formations, including old oil and gas fields and aquifers (natural underground reservoirs) under the seabed.
Fossil fuels will continue to play a significant role in the global energy mix for the foreseeable future – both in the UK and internationally – with global demand for coal set to increase by some 70% by 2030. So it is important that Governments find ways of reducing emissions from the use of fossil fuels – CCS is the main option for achieving this. CCS has the potential to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel power stations by as much as 90%. The International Energy Agency suggests that Carbon Capture and storage (CCS) technologies could contribute up to 28% of global CO2 mitigation required by 2050 to achieve stabilisation at +2 degree C.
The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change highlighted the strategic role that CCS technology could play globally in lower carbon emissions, particularly in fast-growing economies with rapidly rising fossil fuel consumption, such as China and India.
Briefly, CCS is a 3-step process which includes capturing the CO2 from power plants and other industrial sources; transporting the CO2 (usually via pipelines) to storage points; and storing the CO2 safely in geological sites such as deep saline formations or depleted oil and gas fields.
There are three different types of carbon dioxide capture systems:
The individual processes involved in CCS are not novel, but the full chain of technologies (capture, transport, and storage) have yet to be demonstrated together at commercial scale.
In the 2006 Energy Review it was outlined that the next logical step for CCS would be to build a full-scale demonstration plant, subject to this being cost effective. The PBR (Pre-Budget Report) in December 2006 announced the appointment of consulting engineers “to ensure that our understanding of the costs of a CCS plant based in the UK is robust”, and the 2007 Energy white paper: meeting the energy challenge subsequently announced that a UK CCS Demonstration Competition would be launched in November 2007 to build the world’s first full scale CCS power plant in the UK. This competition was duly launched by the Prime Minister.
The need for regulatory frameworks to support the operation of CCS has been identified as another important step towards the deployment of CCS – and the UK is widely recognised to be amongst the world leaders in developing such a framework with Legislation currently before Parliament in the UK Energy Bill that will permit the storage of carbon dioxide in the offshore area.
On the 30th July we launched the consultation document: Towards Carbon Capture and Storage, on some of the details of the regulatory regime for CCS, which will help us to ensure that the final regulations are effective, safe and encourage investment in CCS.
The Government has supported smaller scale demonstration of the component parts of CCS. This was formally through the Hydrogen Fuel Cells and Carbon Abatement Technologies Demonstration Programme (HFCATT) scheme. This scheme is now supported through 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.
We work with G8 counterparts to achieve ambitious agreements from G8 Summit in relation to CCS, and also support the EU’s ambition to have up to 12 demonstration projects operational in Europe by 2015. We created the North Sea Basin Task Force in order to work closely with Norway to remove barriers to the deployment of CCS, particularly looking at storage in the North Sea. The Netherlands and Germany have recently joined the task force.
We are active participants in key international bodies such as the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum, the International Energy Agency Working Party on Fossil Fuels, and the EU Zero Emissions Platform (ZEP). We recently announced that the UK will be hosting a major CCS conference in the UK – the 2009 CSLF conference.
The Uis also leading on the EU-China Near-Zero Emissions (NZEC) initiative. The UK has also supported capacity building activities in developing countries with workshops in China, India and Africa, as requested by the UNFCCC.
