Region eyes ‘clean power’ windfall

Capture Power, one of two groups looking to develop “clean coal” power stations in Yorkshire, said it is now very hopeful of attracting significant European funding towards the construction of its proposed 425MW plant at Drax in North Yorkshire, and is confident the scheme will be up and running by 2019.

Regional planners have insisted for years that Yorkshire is one of the best places in the world to trial CCS technology, which involves capturing CO2 emissions from power plants and other heavy polluters before they are released and burying them underground.

Yorkshire benefits from its close proximity to depleted oil and gas fields in the North Sea, where scientists believe millions of tons of CO2 could be transported via an underground pipeline and buried for millions of years.

Richard Simon-Lewis, head of finance at Capture Power, said the European Investment Bank (EIB) – which is currently assessing CCS projects across Europe for a possible EU grant – agrees the region should be at the vanguard of the carbon storage revolution.

The bank’s conclusion is potentially hugely significant as Yorkshire battles to win funding for the new power stations.

“Yorkshire is an area that’s very familiar to the funding community – we’ve seen a lot of the energy generation in the UK built in the area,” Mr Simon-Lewis told the Commons Energy Committee.

“We clearly have intensive energy users in the area, and from the conversations we’ve had with institutions such as the EIB, I think it’s fair to say they have identified that region specifically, together with Rotterdam, as the two key regions where you can deliver significant CCS clusters.”

The construction of a CCS power plant in Yorkshire would offer benefit right across the region, with planners proposing to build an oversized pipeline which other power stations and heavy industries could eventually tap into and sequest their own CO2 emissions – so creating a ‘CCS cluster’.

Such a project may offer a long-term future for Yorkshire’s heavy industries as the clampdown on carbon emissions continues, while potentially attracting billions of pounds of investment from polluting industries around the world who may look to make use of the new pipeline.

Mr Simon-Lewis said building an oversized pipeline is “clearly going to help with keeping the industries in that region – and also attract significant inward investment”. He cited a report suggesting £8bn of new business could be attracted to Yorkshire if a shared CO2 pipeline was built.

The announcement yesterday that 2CO Energy still hopes to proceed with its own CCS power station at Hatfield, near Doncaster, means the region now has two viable ‘clean coal’ projects which could be up and running by the end of the decade.

The two power stations at Drax and Hatfield would use the same shared pipeline to pump CO2 emissions underground and out to the North Sea.

The Drax project remains the front-runner, having been shortlisted by the Government for its £1bn funding competition, with a final decision expected next year.

“We are within touching distance of making a breakthrough,” Mr Simon-Lewis said.

“We believe the support we will get through the capital grant, and potentially through (the EU), are sufficient to bring the White Rose project forward and meet our timescale of 2018/19.

“We have got the wind at our backs; the momentum is there.”