Royal Dutch Shell remains hopeful that carbon capture and storage can get off the ground even after having to abandon its own U.K project due to a lack of government support. “The decision to withdraw support for the Peterhead CCS project was a huge disappointment. But I remain hopeful, if only because there is no way around CCS. According to the International Energy Agency limiting global warming to 2°C requires CCS,” Shell CEO Ben van Beurden said in a sponsored Q&A published Wednesday in Politico EU.
Peterhead was one of two projects in contention when the United Kingdom in November 2015 axed its £1 billion carbon capture and storage commercialization competition. The U.K. government said it was not economically feasible to pursue the competition at the time. The government launched the competition in 2012, and a funding decision had been expected within a matter of months at the time cancellation. Both Peterhead and the other remaining initiative, the White Rose CCS Project in Yorkshire, managed by the Capture Power consortium, were subsequently suspended.
Van Beurden noted that Shell is involved in other CCS efforts, including its Quest project in Alberta, Canada. The project is the world’s first CCS project on an oil sands upgrader and Canada’s second commercial-scale CCS project, following SaskPower’s Boundary Dam Unit 3 coal-fired power plant. Quest is a retrofit to Shell’s Scotford upgrader, where oil sands bitumen is converted into synthetic crude.