Scotland jockeys for carbon-capture lead

The government and Scottish Enterprise have just released a carbon-capture roadmap that includes ambitions to create a number of CCS demonstration projects, develop an offshore carbon-licensing regime, invest in key skills, and undertake increased lobbying of the European Union and the United Kingdom for more support for Scottish carbon-capture plans. Scotland is already home to the UK's first carbon-capture pilot, which was built by ScottishPower at the 2,304-megawatt (MW) Longannet coal-fired power plant in Fife, on Scotland's eastern coast.

"Scotland has all the attributes to become a world leader in carbon capture," said Energy Minister Jim Mather. "The North Sea alone has enough capacity to store emissions from industrial coal-fired plants for the next 200 years — a capacity greater than the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany combined. Scotland already has elements of the required onshore and offshore infrastructure, and our skills in the oil, gas and engineering industries can be utilized to help the industry grow and develop. As a hugely important technology in the fight against climate change, CCS offers Scotland a fantastic platform for low-carbon economic growth."

The government has also released guidance on how applications for new fossil-fuelled power plants will be judged. Any new coal-fired station will need to contain CCS facilities on at least 300 MW of its capacity from day one. CCS retro-fitting for coal-fired stations will be implemented by no later than 2025, and 100% of the capacity should be covered by CCS technology on new builds from 2020. This is in line with the UK's CCS legislation.

Mather added: "We now want to see a number of CCS demonstration projects developed in Scotland. We have already achieved a significant amount of progress in this area, but we know that more needs to be done as we move into the demonstration phase."

Companies like ScottishPower are actively working on developing the storage side of the CCS equation. Last summer, the company formed an alliance with Shell UK, a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell plc and National Grid plc to help create a viable method of transporting and storing captured CO2 under the seabed.