As well as up to 300 million euro to the proposed 426 MWe White Rose oxyfuel plant at the Drax site (see separate news item and MPS, April 2014, pp 16-18), the European Commission has awarded about 700 million euro funding to 18 renewable energy projects under the second call of the NER-300 programme (with the money coming from sale of emission allowances via the EU Emissions Trading System, making "polluters the driving force behind developing new low-carbon initiatives", says the Commission). The total of €1 billion awarded in the NER-300 second call is expected to leverage about €900 million of additional private investment.
The projects awarded funding in the second call must reach their final investment decisions by June 2016 and enter into operation by June 2018, which would seem a potentially problematic schedule for White Rose, the only remaining CCS project of the 39 projects funded under NER-300 calls 1 and 2. White Rose will receive up to €300 million under the second call. It is also one of two projects remaining in the UK government's CCS commercialisation programme, along with the Peterhead combined cycle capture proposal, and is currently the subject of a FEED study designed to de-risk the scheme prior to FID.
The other projects supported under the second call and max funding allocated (million euro) are as follows:
- Bio2G (Sweden), SNG production (200 MWt) from woody biomass and injection into has grid - 203.7
- Puglia Active Network (Italy), smart grid - 85
- NEMO (France/Martinique), 16 MWe floating ocean thermal energy conversion - 72.1
- EOS Green Energy (Cyprus), 50 MWe, CSP with superheated steam cycle and graphite thermal storage - 60.2;
- Mazara Solar (Italy), 50 MWe central tower CSP using saturated steam as storage medium - 40;
- MET (Denmark), methane production from straw and injection into the national gas grid - 39.3;
- FloCan5 (Spain), 25 MWe of floating wind turbines - 34
- BALEA (Spain), 26 MWe of floating wind turbines - 33.4
- W2B (Spain), MSW to biofuels - 29.2
- TORR, Rakke (Estonia), torrefaction of woody biomass, with heat and power coming from biomass gasification - 25;
- WestWave (Ireland), 5 x 1 MWe wave energy converters - 23.3;
- GEOSTRAS, French/German cross border 6.7 MWe/34.7 MWt geothermal project with circulation loop several km long at a depth of 4-5 km - 16.8;
- Geothermae (Croatia), 3.1 MWe, geothermal hot brine, organic Rankine cycle - 14.7;
- Green+ (Cyprus), microgrid - 11.1;
- SWELL (Portugal), 5.6 MWe of seabed-located "oscillating wave surge converters" - 9.1
- Santa Luzia Solar Farm (Portugal), 24 MWp concentrated PV (first PV project award under NER-300) - 8
- Pärnu (Estonia), fast pyrolysis of woody biomass, with heat inputs from a CHP plant, producing pyrolysis oil as a potential substitute for HFO - 6.9;
- CHP biomass pyrolysis (Latvia), fast pyrolysis project similar to Pärnu - 3.9.
Related articles
White Rose: hoping to minimise CCS risks with oxycombustion (April 2014)
Peterhead CCS project: a step closer to realisation
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