The UK subsidiary of German utility RWE says it is “surprised and very disappointed” not to have been pre-qualified as a bidder in the UK government’s carbon capture and storage (CCS) demonstration competition.
RWE npower believes that its bid to win funding to develop what could become the UK’s first commercial-scale demonstration of CCS technology was one of the most complete and advanced, and is holding urgent talks with the government to find out why it was rejected.
“We need to understand why our bid failed and what our options are going forward,” an RWE npower spokesman said.
RWE’s bid was one of nine submitted to the government in March this year. The utility has teamed up with five partners to develop a cradle-to-grave demonstration of CCS, but the project is now in jeopardy.
The CCS competition is designed to stimulate investment in and development of low-carbon technologies in the UK. The winner, which will be selected from the four pre-qualified bidders announced at the end of June, will receive funding to develop a CCS project capturing 90 per cent of emissions from a 300-400 MW coal-fired unit in the UK.
RWE npower is planning to initially develop a 1 MW-scale CCS pilot scheme at its Aberthaw power station in Wales, then scale this up to 25 MW. Its goal is to apply the technology at a commercial scale on a planned clean coal power plant in Tilbury, Essex.
“We don’t know yet what the impact of [the government’s decision] will be,” RWE npower told MPS. “We wouldn’t rule out doing something anyway but … it’s too early to say.”
BP Alternative Energy, E.On UK, Peel Power Limited and Scottish Power Generation are the four pre-qualified bidders who will now continue discussions with the government in the competition.
Peel Power Limited is a joint venture between UK property and infrastructure company Peel Holdings and Denmark’s Dong Energy. Their partnership also includes Senergy Alternative Energy, a carbon storage consultancy, oil and gas consultants Atkins-Boreas, and engineering consultants Mott MacDonald.
Dong Energy is currently piloting post-combustion CCS technology at its Esbjerg facility in Denmark. Dong also has subsidiaries active in gas storage and oil and gas exploration and production.
The Peel-Dong consortium says it will now develop, refine and present its proposals to the UK government as it enters the next, more detailed stages of the competition.
“Our engineers are developing carbon capture concepts because we see this as the technology of the future in order to reduce and even eliminate global warming while still maintaining and developing our societies,” said Bent Christensen, senior vice president of Dong Energy. “We have been attracted to the UK by a proactive attitude to this technology and we hope to be able to participate in the UK government’s ambitions through this competition.”
Dong’s CCS project at Esbjerg is part of the Europen Union’s CASTOR project and was inaugurated in March 2006. The project is a large-scale trial to investigate how power station exhausts can be modified to remove carbon dioxide. The project includes 30 industrial, research and university partners from 11 European countries.
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