Region poised to host ‘clean coal’ power station

The first of four giant biomass storage domes being erected at the Drax coal-fired power station in North Yorkshire

George Osborne used his Budget speech yesterday to announce that two carbon capture and storage (CCS) schemes have been put forward into the final stage of the Government’s £1bn funding competition, designed to help get the fledgling green energy technology off the ground.

Drax’s plan for a 425MW ‘clean coal’ power station at its existing site near Selby now looks almost certain to go ahead, along with Scottish and Southern Energy’s proposal for a similar-sized gas-fired CCS power station at Peterhead in Aberdeenshire.

A final funding decision will not be confirmed until 2015, but Ministers made clear yesterday they are hopeful both projects will be up and running before the end of the decade – creating thousands of construction jobs in Yorkshire and in Scotland.

Energy Secretary Ed Davey said “Today’s announcement moves us a significant step closer to a Carbon Capture and Storage industry – an industry which will help reduce carbon emissions and create thousands of jobs.

“These two are major infrastructure projects potentially worth several billion pounds and could support thousands of construction jobs over the next few years.

“We will now be working swiftly to progress our preferred two [projects], while making sure we continue to provide the best possible value to tax payers.”

The new power station at Drax will produce enough electricity to power more than 600,000 homes.

More importantly, however, it will use cutting-edge CCS technology to extract 90 per cent of the harmful CO2 emissions from chimney flues before they are released, sending them along an underground pipeline across Yorkshire to be safely buried beneath the North Sea bed.

If successful, the technology is expected to be rolled out across Britain and large parts of the developed world over the years to come in an effort to slash global carbon emissions.

A spokeswoman for the project said: “We are delighted our project has been successful in attracting funding.

“We believe White Rose has great potential to demonstrate CCS technology for other projects in the UK and overseas.”