The UK has finally seen proposals for carbon capture and storage projects reaching maturity at a time when they also meet pressing government policy needs. In the past the relatively slow progress of projects, from conception to completion of the front end engineering design (FEED) studies, and changes in the UK’s energy situation over that time, have led to a mismatch between the CCS offers capable of FID (final investment decision) and government requirements at the time when support funding decisions needed to be made.
The first example was BP’s offer of an H2-fired gas power plant at Peterhead. This was announced at the Exeter Climate Conference in early 2005, at a time when new coal power plants were unthinkable, but needed a government subsidy decision in mid 2007 when, after a steep increase in natural gas prices, the UK utilities were planning a convoy of new 800 MW supercritical coal plants, leading to climate camps and Greenpeace protesters on the roof of Westminster Hall.
Yet, in 2011, FEED studies, funded by the 1st UK CCS Competition, for post-combustion capture plants on those new supercritical coal plants failed to progress to projects because the recession – even more strongly than the protesters – had made the utilities abandon their plans for new coal capacity.
And finally, in late 2015, the 2nd UK CCS Competition was also cancelled after BEIS had exceeded its agreed electricity Levy Control Framework budget supporting renewables and failed to get additional Treasury funding for CCS. The only credible offer, a second Peterhead FEED study, for a post-combustion capture retrofit with storage in the disused Goldeneye gas field, was deemed poor Value for Money (VfM), partly because of the small scale forced on it by the BEIS competition terms, and also because it was designed with no obvious on-site expansion capability.
After the cancellation of these single source-to-sink projects an alternative model for UK CCS deployment, based on ‘clusters’ of capture projects sharing carbon dioxide transport and storage, was promoted by the UK CCS Research Centre and the Energy Technology Institute [1].
Virtually all of the UK’s geological storage lies some distance offshore, in the same areas as oil and gas fields, and very significant cost savings can be achieved if this storage, and the pipelines to it, can be shared. Having multiple potential CO2 sources in the onshore cluster area also keeps the overall cluster viable, even if changes in circumstance mean individual plants are no longer available. And the adoption in 2019 of a net zero target for 2050 made it obvious that all sources of CO2 emissions, and not just power plants, will need CCS if they are to continue to operate [2].
Now, after a great deal of hard work by DESNZ, industry, regulators and other UK CCS stakeholders, assisted by government funding of £170 million for the Industrial Decarbonisation Challenge studies on projects and clusters [3], we have arrived at the point where two ‘Track 1’ CO2 transport and storage systems have been selected for early funding [4], one in the North West running from the Merseyside/Deeside region into the Irish Sea (the Liverpool Bay CO2 Transport and Storage Project [5], part of the HyNet cluster) and the other running from Teesside into the North Sea (Northern Endurance Partnership [6], part of the East Coast Cluster).
Three capture projects to provide initial CO2 for the pipelines will also get early funding, for a total subsidy over 25 years of nearly £22 billion:
- the Net Zero Teesside Power (NZT Power) gas fuelled CCGT power plant on Teesside, with amine post-combustion capture using a proprietary Shell Cansolv solvent [7];
- the Protos Energy Recovery Facility on south Merseyside, with an amine post-combustion capture system thought to be using non-proprietary MEA [7];
- the EET Hydrogen project [8] on south Merseyside, which is using a proprietary Johnson Matthey gas reforming technology [9].
The final investment decision for the Teesside projects was announced on 10 December [10]; at the time of writing FID decisions for the Merseyside/Deeside projects are still pending.
The NZT new-build CCGT power plant with CCS will be of particular interest for Modern Power Systems readers. This is supported by a ‘Dispatchable Power Agreement’ [11], specifically designed to cover the costs of variable operations to support intermittent renewables, a role highlighted in the UK government’s ‘Clean Power 2030 Action Plan’ [12]. Full details are still to be published, but preliminary descriptions suggest that the following features have been implemented [13]:
- The GE-Vernova 9HA02 gas turbine runs with a high enough back pressure to overcome the flue gas pressure drop in the post-combustion capture plant without the need for an extra fan.
- A PCC plant bypass stack on the HRSG is retained, sealed by a damper when not in use.
- Partial flue gas recirculation is used to raise the CO2 level in the flue gas going to the absorber.
- Steam to regenerate the amine solvent is extracted after partial expansion in the power plant steam turbine to minimise the energy penalty.
With the initial direction for CCS deployment now firmly established the sector is obviously looking for follow-on UK activities to maintain momentum. These include both additional ‘Track 2’ transport and storage clusters and capture projects on Humberside and in Scotland plus more CO2 capture projects on Teesside and in the North West (and further afield, using ship and rail liquid CO2 transport to receiving facilities in the clusters) to use the extra capacity in the pipelines [14].
Early and detailed dissemination of learnings from the initial projects will be an important factor for reducing the costs for these future UK projects – and also for progressing CCS more widely to help achieve the global emissions reductions needed to tackle climate change [15]. Despite the long build-up period – and in some ways because of it – UK CCS activities are still at the leading edge in many respects.
Links
1. https://ukccsrc.ac.uk/delivering-cost-effective-ccs-in-the-2020s/
2. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-becomes-first-major-economy-to-pass-net-zero-emissions-law
4. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy4301n3771o
9. https://matthey.com/products-and-markets/energy/hydrogen/ccs-enabled-blue-hydrogen
10. https://www.equinor.com/news/20241210-approve-execution-of-uks-first-ccs-projects
12. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/clean-power-2030-action-plan
13. https://www.gevernova.com/gas-power/resources/case-studies/net-zero-teesside
14. https://www.ukri.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/IUK-UKRI-181224-OpergyLtd-CCSSupplyChainPlan.pdf
15. https://ukccsrc.ac.uk/ukccsrc-workshop-lessons-amine-post-combustion-projects-sept-2024/
