Teesside CCS network would underpin jobs
INDUSTRY chiefs have said a ground-breaking coal project could be key to developing Teesside’s revolutionary Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) network.
B9 Coal’s project, revealed in the Evening Gazette yesterday, brings super-efficient underground coal gasification, fuel cells and CCS together in a technological world first.
The company, at Wilton, could become a major user of a CCS network, which would pipe from a cluster of Teesside’s biggest polluters and store it in natural voids beneath the North Sea bed. With an estimated price tag of billions for CCS, bosses behind Teesside’s Eston Grange Power Project are vying to win a UK competition for four CCS demonstrator projects.
A network for Teesside would underpin jobs in the chemical process sector as carbon reduction targets begin to bite for its heaviest polluters.
“B9 Coal’s project could enable a CCS system,” said Stan Higgins, chief executive of the North East Process Industry Cluster (NEPIC). “It could certainly support one.
“Anything that increases the capacity of a CCS system is likely to result in economies of scale - cost savings for every user of the network.”
B9 Coal has formed a top-flight consortium for its 500 megawatt project, including Australian-based Linc Energy - the world’s largest UCG specialist, WSP Group and AFC Energy. It has also earmarked Rio Tinto Alcan’s plant at Lynemouth, which is linked to the Teesside CCS project, as a potential site. Under UK Government policy, carbon capture and storage technology is required for a power project if underground coal gasification (UCG) is used for power generation. It’s estimated UCG could give the UK access to an extra 17bn tonnes - 300 years - of as-yet untapped coal.
“The North-east’s industrial background made it the perfect location for our ground-breaking project,” said B9 Coal director Alisa Murphy.
UK energy specialist Neil Crumpton, from the Bellona Foundation, an international green NGO (non Governmental organisation), said the project was “revolutionary and undoubtedly world-leading”.
“An early, successful demonstration at scale of AFC's remarkable fuel cell, and underground gasification with CCS, would open up several strategic-scale opportunities to the UK in terms of variable power generation, energy security, climate policy and UK manufacturing jobs. As this project proposal becomes more widely noticed by power generators, governments will start watching closely to see how the UK responds to this unique and huge opportunity.”
