Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
4/3/2015
The Caledonia Clean Energy Project, which failed to secure funding in the United Kingdom’s carbon capture and storage competition, has been awarded £4.2 million for research support in a joint announcement by the Scottish and U.K. governments. The project is a 570 MW new-build integrated gasification combined cycle project in Grangemouth, Scotland, with storage in an offshore saline formation. “Carbon Capture and Storage could be crucial in helping us meet our ambitious climate change goals. The UK is one of the world’s frontrunners in this sector and the UK Government is leading Europe with its support of the two competition projects at Peterhead in Scotland and White Rose in Yorkshire,” said Ed Davey, U.K. Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, in a release.
Caledonia is a project of Seattle-based Summit Power Group and will be of a similar design as Summit’s Texas Clean Energy Project, currently being developed near Odessa. The funding, £1.7 million from DECC and £2.5 million from the Scottish Government, will support research and evaluation for the plant to determine if it is a feasible endeavor. “Summit Power Group, LLC (Summit), is grateful to Scottish Government and the United Kingdom’s Department of Energy & Climate Change (UK DECC) for agreeing in principle to provide significant financial support to help advance the Caledonia Clean Energy Project (CCEP), a planned cleaner coal plant with carbon capture to be located in Scotland on the Firth of Forth,” a representative from Summit told GHG Monitor in written response this week. “We look forward to finalizing the grant terms and progressing this project in partnership with the Scottish Government and UK DECC.”
The announcement has been cheered by CCS advocates in the United Kingdom. “This is a really important step forward by UK and Scottish governments to support development of innovative low carbon projects at very large scale. During the past 10 years we have seen many projects fall away because of perceived government disinterest. This type of support is essential if the UK is to encourage a series of low-carbon power projects, to follow-on from Peterhead-Goldeneye in Scotland, and from White Rose in Yorkshire,” said Stuart Haszeldine, Director of Scottish Carbon Capture and Storage, an independent academic and applied research partnership of British Geological Survey, Heriot-Watt University, University of Aberdeen, the University of Edinburgh and the University of Strathclyde. “It is important to realise that this is the start of a long trail. Even if these investigations are successful, the Grangemouth project will not be operational until 2021 at the earliest,” he said.
