£2.5m to develop North Sea CO2 storage
Published: 22 December, 2014
The Department for Energy and Climate Change are making £2.5m available to encourage development of CO2 storage in the North Sea.
The money will help companies identify the next phase of sites under the Sea to store the CO2 emissions from coal and gas power stations as well as heavy industry such as steel and cement factories.
The £2.5m is new funding from DECC’s Innovation Fund, and will be delivered by the Energy Technologies Institute (ETI).
ETI will issue a call for proposals by the end of December, with a deadline of 5th February 2015; with a view to awarding contracts and beginning work by spring 2015. It is hoped that the Government funding will catalyse further funding from other partners and industry. Developing a storage site from scratch can take 6-9 years – therefore it is important this work is started now to ensure sites will be ready and available when they are needed.
The UK is at the forefront of developing carbon capture and storage (CCS), with excellent potential for storage in the North and Irish Seas, and the expertise in operating offshore to make it a reality. Britain is one of the world leaders in the technology and as carbon capture and storage is commercialised, we will be in a strong position to export this knowledge to a decarbonising global economy.
The UK supply chain is already benefiting from the UK’s commitment to CCS development as contracts under the £100m planning and engineering phase of the CCS Commercialisation Programme have gone to UK-based companies. Today, National Grid has announced the award of a subcontract to ADTI (Applied Drilling Technology International) which will support its CO2 storage work in the North Sea as part of the White Rose Front End Engineering and Design Study (FEED).
