Carbon capture switch-on 'like the first blurry picture on a television'

Published Date: 30 May 2009
By Jenny Haworth, Environment correspondent

SCOTLAND is leading the way towards a new energy era in which power stations are fitted with groundbreaking technology to capture greenhouse gas emissions, it was claimed yesterday.
The switch-on of a £1 million prototype to capture carbon dioxide emissions from Longannet Power Station in Fife was compared yesterday with the hunt for oil in the North Sea.It was even described as a technological advance equivalent to the first "crackly call on a telephone or blurry picture on a television". Experts say the pilot – the first of its kind in the UK – could pave the way for thousands of fossil fuel power stations worldwide to use technology being tested by ScottishPower at Longannet. The carbon capture kit might also eventually be used on all the UK's fossil fuel power plants, so their could be transported to be stored under the North Sea – a process known as carbon capture and storage (CCS).This would enable power stations to continue producing the huge quantities of electricity, while vastly reducing their impact on the climate, it is argued.ScottishPower chief executive Nick Horler said: "This is the first time CCS technology has been switched on and working at an operational coal-fired power station in the UK, and is a major step forward in delivering the reality of carbon-free fossil fuel electricity generation. It's about taking the concept of CCS out of the lab and making it a full-scale commercial reality." He urged that the opportunity for the UK to lead the way in carbon storage should not be "squandered", as it had been with nuclear power and wind."Proving this technology at scale and, crucially, proving that it can be retrofitted, will mean it could be installed to an estimated 50,000 fossil fuel plants around the world, which would be a huge step towards reaching global reduction targets." It is estimated the carbon capture sector could create 50,000 jobs across the UK. Mr Horler added: "There is the potential to create an industry on the same scale as North Sea oil."Jim Walker, co-founder of independent organisation The Climate Group, compared it to other major technological advances, saying it was "a bit like the first crackly telephone call or blurry television picture".David Hunter, an analyst at energy firm McKinnon & Clarke, said: "This has huge potential for Scotland's economy. We have the infrastructure, the offshore know-how, the technology and the space to store carbon in disused oilfields and beneath the seabed. If the technology can be proven to work, and is economically viable, then Scotland has a global competitive advantage."The 1MW prototype unit switched on yesterday at Longannet, Europe's third-largest coal-fired power station, is a small-scale replica of a full-sized carbon capture plant. However, it only captures before releasing it again – rather than storing it and is tiny compared with the technology needed for the full 2,300MW plant.ScottishPower hopes the test unit will help experts move towards building a 330MW demonstration plant at Longannet, which would incorporate capture of , transportation to the North Sea and storage in disused gas plants or "saline aquifers" – gaps in the rocks in the seabed.The firm is hoping to win a competition for about £1 billion of government funding to go on to develop the 330MW demonstration plant, which could be complete by 2014. ScottishPower is competing for the cash with RWE npower and E.ON, which are planning to build power stations with CCS south of the Border if they win, instead of retrofitting an existing plant.WWF last week published a report suggesting Longannet was the best option in the UK government competition for a carbon capture trial as the others would result in higher emissions. Prime Minister Gordon Brown had planned to be at yesterday's switch-on. He sent a letter apologising for not being able to attend, but said it was a "historic day for the company and for the country".New school of thought for a developing industryA GLOBAL centre of excellence in carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology is to be established in Scotland.Energy firm Iberdrola, which owns ScottishPower, has chosen to establish the centre in Scotland to help accelerate the deployment of the technology. Nick Horler, chief executive of ScottishPower, said: "Only by making the UK a centre of excellence can we realise the full potential of CCS by training and nurturing a new talent pool with the necessary skills and expertise to take advantage of this emerging industry."The firm announced yesterday that it would be funding a professorship of carbon capture and storage at the University of Edinburgh.Duncan McLaren: Tiny step on the road to bringing under control A TRIAL has started of carbon dioxide capture at Longannet power station, Scotland's largest single source of the climate-changing gas.The ScottishPower tests, which started yesterday, are an important step in the quest to slash emissions of climate changing gases to a safe level, and in the development of a technology that will be vital if countries such as India and China are to develop without redoubling their impacts on the world's fragile climate systems.ScottishPower has gone further than BP, whose proposal for a carbon-capture power plant at Peterhead was shelved in 2007 after the UK government announced support for nuclear power, but no clear backing for carbon capture. But the trial will capture the emissions from just one megawatt (MW) of the capacity at Longannet – a 2.4-gigawatt power station. So that's 1MW down, 2,399 to go…The trial is intended to pave the way for a 300MW "commercial scale" installation by 2014 – if the UK government agrees to fund it – which would still leave 2,100MW unabated, to be fitted in the future. Nor can we count on carbon capture creating sustainable Scottish businesses and jobs. The technology at Longannet is supplied by Aker, a Norwegian company. The key ingredient, a chemical that captures the carbon dioxide, is its property.And Scotland's big advantage – good sites under the North Sea to store captured carbon – is far from permanent. A recent study suggested there was capacity for over 200 years of Scotland's emissions, but other European countries will want a share.So carbon capture is a bridging technology to a renewable future – it will not allow us to go on polluting for as long as the coal lasts.If Scotland is to capture a share of the jobs and economic wealth in this technology we need to develop it faster. Ministers should adopt the Californian idea of a standard for new and refurbished power stations, which guarantees that, if they are to burn coal, they will need carbon capture at a commercial scale immediately.• Duncan McLaren is the chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland.