U.K. launches carbon capture and storage project

U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown said today he is pushing forward with a broad renewable energy agenda, announcing a request for proposals for a carbon capture and storage project in the country.

The government backed project calls for the demonstration of post-combustion carbon capture and storage, or CCS, on a coal-fired power station with the carbon dioxide stored offshore.

"We will also consider whether, if we can show that carbon capture and storage is technologically and commercially viable, it should be made mandatory in some form for all new British fossil fuel plants," said Brown at an event in London.

The prime minister was speaking at the World Wide Fund for Nature's "A One Planet Future" conference today.

The U.K. divisions of Germany's RWE and E.ON have said separately they plan to enter their supercritical coal-fired power plant projects into the competition for proposals, and the U.K.'s Scottish & Southern Energy expressed interest in joining the fray last week.

Take a look at a rendering of E.ON's proposed Kingsnorth supercritical plant >>

"For many countries—including the U.S., China and India—coal is still the cheapest, most readily available form of energy and will remain so for decades to come," said Brown.

"So if we are to have any chance of meeting our global climate goals, we must find ways of capturing and storing the carbon dioxide it produces."

The government wants a project that can fully demonstrate its CCS system by 2014, capturing approximately 90 percent of the CO2 emitted by the equivalent of 300 megawatts of generating capacity.

The U.K. plans to fully fund one qualifying CCS project, but proposals must be in by March 2008. The winning proposal is expected to be announced in May or June of 2009.

The project does not have a projected price tag, but a similar project in the U.S., called FutureGen, is estimated to cost $1.5 billion (see FutureGen picks designer for clean coal plant).

The bulk of that cost will be covered by the U.S. Department of Energy. The proposed 275 megawatt zero emissions plant is expected to produce electricity and hydrogen. The DOE will announce the location of the facility in December. The shortlist includes two sites in Illinois and two sites in Texas.

E.ON is also part of the consortium working on FutureGen, which is expected to go online in 2012.

The U.S. system will use pre-combustion capture, or integrated gasification combined cycle, which involves reacting fuel with oxygen, air, or steam, to produce a gas consisting mainly of carbon monoxide and hydrogen.

The U.K. project, which does not have a cool nickname as of yet, will be post-combustion, where CO2 is separated from flue gas using a chemical solvent.

There are a number of carbon capture technologies currently available, but long term storage of CO2 is still a new field. The full chain of carbon capture and storage has not yet been demonstrated on a commercial scale.

The U.K. has a target of reducing CO2 emissions by at least 60 percent by 2050, but Brown said that "the evidence now suggests that, as part of an international agreement, developed countries may have to reduce their emissions by up to 80 percent."

He said he plans to present the evidence to the country's committee on climate change and ask it to advise on whether the U.K.'s target should be increased.

The country isn't putting all of its eggs in the carbon capture basket, supporting a number of renewable projects across the island.

"We will also explore the potential for major new investment in energy from wave and tidal sources. We have already announced a study of the feasibility of generating tidal energy from the River Severn, this alone could provide 5 percent of Britain's electricity needs," said Brown

The prime minister also said all new homes will be required to be carbon neutral by 2016.

For the CCS project, the U.K. said it's looking for a system that can be commercialized around the world, so the technology should be compatible with pulverized coal-fired plants, which account for the majority of facilities.

Brown is also still considering future nuclear generation to meet the country's energy needs. The U.K. currently gets 9.5 percent of its energy from what the prime minister calls "low carbon sources," including 2 percent from renewables, and 7.5 percent from nuclear.

"In order to meet our global greenhouse gas targets, by 2050 virtually all energy for electricity and most of the energy used for heating, cooling and transport in our country will have to come from low carbon sources," said Brown.

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