Small-scale pilots ‘the way forward’ for CCS

Small-scale pilot projects are “the way forward” for carbon capture and storage, industry figures have said.

If the technology is to achieve widespread deployment then it will first need to prove its worth to sceptical ministers and investors who are unwilling to back larger, more expensive projects, they told delegates at an event in London.

“We spent a lot of time trying to get something big off the ground and we’ve been notoriously unsuccessful at doing that,” said Progressive Energy managing director Peter Whitten, referencing the commercialisation competition which was cancelled by the government in late 2015.

“Hitting our head against that particular brick wall doesn’t seem like a good plan… Most industries grow by doing smaller projects and then incrementing their way up and I don’t think the CCS industry is any different… I think it is the way forward.”

Tim Yeo, former energy minister and chairman of New Nuclear Watch Europe, expressed a similar sentiment, saying the key is to build up “momentum” and go for the “easiest wins”. “There’s a sense, even amongst people who take an interest in climate change policy, of almost giving up hope, and therefore it’s vital to have some successes to point to.”

Olav Skalmeraas, vice-president for CCS at Statoil, also agreed, citing the Norwegian company’s work on small-scale industrial projects: “I always hear big is beautiful and even bigger is fantastic… I would say, is that true? Is it true that, when moving down the cost curve and learning curve, we should embark on the biggest megaproject initially?”

He suggested that CCS should instead be trialled in a “modularised and standardised way” to learn how the technology works in practice. “We have taken that challenge in Statoil and we think it has some interesting merits – learning by doing small decentralised projects.”

Skalmeraas said the UK should, like Norway, focus on industrialised projects to kick start CCS.

Technology and innovation manager at the Tees Valley Combined Authority, Sarah Tennison, said the Teesside Collective project they are developing would be an excellent candidate in both regards: “Starting small, starting easy is something which should be pursued and it should be pursued in an area like Teesside because we have the opportunity to expand to both power and industry.”

Tennison said the industrial CCS pilot at Teesside would cost £110 million to build and £29 million to run each year. “This is not billions of pounds, this is hundreds of millions of pounds. We’re an order of magnitude different to what we were talking about in the power sector.”

She said businesses had often told her they were interested in investing in CCS but not until the transportation and storage infrastructure is in place. The Teesside Collective could achieve this at a “relatively low cost”.

Earlier at the event Tim Yeo backed a call for the creation of a CCS obligation, similar in nature to the Renewables Obligation scheme for low-carbon generation, describing it as “absolutely vital”.