New funds to accelerate CCS development

1st September 2008

The Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) is a new, unique Public/Private Partnership created less than a year ago with project funding resources of up to £1billion. Industrial partners include BP, Caterpillar, E.ON, EDF, Rolls-Royce and Shell. Flexible in its approach towards each programme, the ETI has initially operated via Calls for Expressions of Interest (EoI) in energy projects.  The next Call will be for EoIs for Carbon Capture and Storage.

Andrew Green, the ETI Programme Manager for Carbon Capture and Storage, explains some of the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.

The ETI was formed to accelerate the deployment of projects to meet the UK’s energy targets. According to the IEA, CCS has the potential to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel power stations by as much as 90%, and could contribute up to 19% of global carbon dioxide mitigation by 2050, so it is an obvious area for investment by the ETI.  Dr Fatih Birol, Chief Economist at the IEA, recently described a commitment to CCS as a ‘litmus test’ on how seriously governments are addressing climate change.

Many organisations and governments are now considering carbon capture projects. EPSRC, The Technology Strategy Board and others are working in this area and so it’s important to make clear where the ETI fits in.

The ETI is focused on enabling deployment of technology; we do not fund basic research, but rather we work in what is sometimes called the ‘Valley of Death’ in technology development: taking ideas proven in the laboratory through to a point where they are ready for full scale demonstration.

The way we do this is significantly different from other organisations.  We focus on a particular area of technology – such as Wind, Marine, etc. – and engage with potential project partners in a way that is best suited to that area.  Ours is always a collaborative process – we work actively with our prospective partners throughout, through workshops, and individual discussions, helping them to shape and accelerate their projects.

Soon, the ETI will ask for Expressions of Interest (EoIs) in the area of Carbon Capture and Storage, seeking to work with companies (large and small) and academics to create projects.

We have the exciting prospect of selecting project partners from across the world. This means the ETI can access the very best the world has to offer, and that, I believe, makes us pioneering in the breadth of the search we can undertake to find the answers the UK needs to meet its 2020 and 2050 CO2 targets.

When we publicise the Call for CCS, we will not ask for detailed project ideas.  We ask for EoIs that will allow us to bring together a practical mix of people to create consortia that have access to all the resources – from technical to commercial – to create, deliver and ultimately commercialise CCS projects.

I urge you to keep a lookout on the ETI website, where the Calls for projects are published.  Calls are usually open for six weeks, and within a month of closure we aim to hold our first project Workshop.  You can register on the ETI website, to be kept informed of when a Call is due to be announced.  We are currently developing a “road map” showing what Calls will be announced and when; we expect this to be published early in 2009.

Once the date for submission of EoIs is past, we select a balanced group of 30-40 organisations to attend a Workshop.  At this, the ETI provides a strategic focus for ideas for CCS projects, and encourages the formation of project consortia that can develop the ideas further.

My job as Programme Manager is to work closely with  these consortia to build a portfolio of high-quality CCS projects, from capture to storage, and ensure that they remain focused on the outcomes we need to meet UK CO2 reduction targets.

In CCS, the ETI projects are likely to be sizable, attracting investment of between £5 and £25 Million each.  The ETI has the ability to fully fund projects – even at this scale, although in some cases project teams may provide some funding from their own sources.  In return for our support, we expect projects to deliver what they promise.  Our monies are released against project milestones to make sure that we manage the ETI’s investment wisely.

As a further safeguard to ensure priorities are right,  and to guard against potential conflict of interest, the projects themselves will only begin after review by an independent selection panel of CCS experts from around the world. These panel members are already being recruited but further nominations from Journal readers would be most welcome.

The quality of this panel and reputation of our Partners will be of immense benefit to the CCS projects we support. A great example is BP, which is behind one of the few large-scale CCS projects currently up and running in the world today. The In Salah gas field in Algeria, operated by BP (and its partners Sonatrach and StatoilHydro), is already capturing and storing one million tonnes of CO2 per year in a deep geological formation 2km below the Sahara desert – a reduction in emissions equivalent to taking a quarter of a million cars off the road. It is the ETI’s access to this type of world-class experience that leads me to be very confident that the ETI project teams will be able to make an exceptional contribution in CCS.

Since joining the ETI and becoming involved in our CCS work, I have been struck by the challenge and the speed at which we need to act to build what is, in effect, a complete new industry the size of the UK’s current oil and gas production.  The planned UK government-supported demonstration unit, which uses today’s technology, is an excellent start. However, if we are to maximise our impact on emissions from the current UK 40 GW of fossil-fuel generation (not to mention other significant industrial CO2 sources), we will need to develop new lower cost capture technologies with a smaller performance impact.  We must be  assured that we have sufficient high-integrity sinks available,  and understand how an integrated electricity grid and CO2 transport network will operate.  The ETI is likely to address all these aspects of CCS.

CCS may prove to be an interim solution to the world’s energy needs, but it is a critical one, and we need organisations with expertise and commitment to become actively involved in the ETI’s programmes.

Andrew Green

Carbon Capture Journal