Scottish Power tests carbon capture technology

Energy firm launches a pilot project to extract carbon emissions from a coal-fired power station

Tim Webb
guardian.co.uk, Friday 29 May 2009 16.48 BST

Scottish Power has unveiled what it describes as the UK's first carbon capture and storage kit fitted to an operational coal plant, prompting one rival energy firm to label the claim as "greenwash".
Scottish Power yesterday switched on the portable prototype at its 2,300MW coal plant at Longannet near Fife, which is Europe's third largest coal plant.
For the next seven months, the Spanish-owned company will capture the carbon emissions produced from 1mw of the coal plant to test the chemical process in the hope of rolling the technology out on a larger scale. But the captured emissions will then be released into the atmosphere, rather than stored, a fact the company omitted to mention until questioned by the Guardian.
In the press release issued by the company, its chief executive Nick Horler was quoted as saying: "This is the first time that CCS [carbon capture and storage] 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."
He added: "The test unit uses the exact same technology that we aim to retrofit to the station for a commercial scale CCS project by 2014, and the leap from 1MW to 330MW is now within sight."
Many media reports covering the official opening ceremony later described the technology as storing, not just capturing, the carbon. One executive from a rival energy firm, while acknowledging that Longannet is the first operational coal plant in the UK to capture emissions, said it was "greenwash" to imply they were also being stored. Robin Oakley of ­Greenpeace added: "People will be surprised to learn that Scottish Power is only testing a chemical process rather than doing the hard bit and storing the CO2."