Iberdrola has brought in two major energy firms to boost its prospects of winning a UK government competition to fund a carbon capture and storage (CCS) demonstration plant.
The Spanish firm says that Anglo-Dutch oil company Shell and UK energy network operating company National Grid have joined the CCS consortium led by Iberdrola subsidiary ScottishPower. The consortium has been shortlisted by the government in the CCS tender.
The consortium is preparing a bid to win funding to construct a post-combustion CCS plant demonstrating the removal of at least 90 per cent of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted by the equivalent of 300-400 MW generating capacity and be on-line by 2014. ScottishPower is proposing to build the facility at its Longannet coal-fired power plant in Fife, Scotland.
The move makes Shell the only major oil company present in the competition, in which two other consortia led by RWE and E.On have been shortlisted. BP decided to drop out of the race last year, and Shell will take the place of Marathon Oil, one of the three original participants in the consortium.
The consortium also includes Aker Clean Carbon. National Grid will contribute it expertise in high-pressure pipelines.
Shell is already taking part in a variety of projects to capture and geologically store CO2. “For ScottishPower, the fact that a company of the size and scope of Shell has chosen to join our carbon capture consortium is a considerable coup and a significant boost to our bid,” said ScottishPower CEO Nick Horler.
“The addition of Shell and National Grid to an already first-class team represents an even greater chance of developing a technology that will be vital in tackling climate change.”
Horler also stressed that “Shell’s experience of working offshore in the North Sea is clearly critical – not only in terms of the potential for CO2 storage in depleted oil and gas reservoirs, but because transport and storage of CO2 will demand many of the same engineering and subsurface skills on which the oil and gas industry has depended for many decades.”
He continued: “I believe the inclusion of National Grid as a non-exclusive partner into the consortium is an indication of how far our plans have advanced, as we have now reached a stage where it’s right to involve the UK’s leading pipeline operator.”
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