BOSSES behind a major carbon capture and storage (CCS) project for Teesside say they remain undeterred, despite a rival project being named a UK front-runner for the technology.
Teesside’s Eston Grange Power Project (EGPP) is vying to become one of four UK demonstration projects for CCS, an industry which energy minister Ed Miliband claimed yesterday could spawn 100,000 new jobs by 2030 and generate £6.5bn a year.
Mr Miliband crowned Yorkshire and Humber as the UK’s first low-carbon economic area for CCS, handing the region’s Ferrybridge power station £6.3m towards its own carbon capture trial.
He also named Teesside, Merseyside and Thames Valley as potential CCS centres.
But EGPP bosses say the announcement is positive news - and have claimed their project, while creating and underpinning thousands of jobs, is also the UK scheme best placed for a lucrative second phase to recover oil from untapped North Sea fields.
“Yorkshire and Humber being named isn’t worrying,” said Peter Whitton, chief executive of lead EGPP company Progressive Energy.
“It shows Government is serious about CCS and is beginning to put money behind the technology. It’s another building block.”
The EGPP would not only pipe dangerous away from its own 850 megawatt power station but that of several large commercial polluters nearby, taking up to 15m tonnes of greenhouse gas to subsea aquifers for safe storage.