UPDATE:UK Awards E.ON, ScottishPower Funds For CCS Design Study
March 12 2010 - 12:04PM
Dow Jones News
The U.K. government said Friday it has awarded funding to E.ON
AG (EOAN.XE) and a ScottishPower-led consortium for design and
development studies as part of a competition to build a
commercial-scale carbon capture and storage demonstration
project.
The funding will support Front End Engineering and Design
studies, which will enable the bidders to advance their designs for
ScottishPower's CCS project at Longannet in Scotland and E.ON's
scheme at Kingsnorth in southeast England.
"These two promising projects are at the forefront of the U.K.'s
efforts to build one of the first commercial-scale clean coal
plants in the world," said Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed
Miliband.
The U.K. is keen to encourage the development of carbon capture
and storage to help meet its domestic target to cut emissions by
80% by 2050 and shore up energy security. The U.K. also wants to
take a global lead in CCS technology so it can export it to
countries like China and India, which are rapidly expanding their
coal-fired power generation to support growing economies.
The funding for the FEED studies will be drawn from a pot of
GBP90 million announced in the 2009 budget. The precise amounts
awarded to E.ON and ScottishPower weren't disclosed.
The competition was launched in late 2007 to encourage energy
companies to develop commercially viable CCS schemes that could be
up and running by 2014. The FEED studies will involve detailed
engineering and design work and enables the companies to fully
develop their plans as well as cost every aspect of the
project.
The FEEDs will be completed within 12 months, after which the
final competition winner will be selected to build the CCS
system.
The ScottishPower consortium, which is currently operating a
carbon capture prototype at its Longannet power station, includes
National Grid PLC (NGG), Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSB.LN), Aker
Clean Carbon and Accenture PLC (ACN).
E.ON aims to have its carbon capture unit connected to its
planned Kingsnorth coal power plant.
ScottishPower is the U.K. unit of Iberdrola SA (IBE.MC).
-By Selina Williams, Dow Jones Newswires +44 207 842 9262;
selina.williams@dowjones.com