05-06 Mar, 2009 - Beijing, CHINA
Crowne Plaza Park View Wuzhou Beijing
Crowne Plaza Park View Wuzhou Beijing
The European commission today proposed earmarking €1.25bn to kickstart carbon capture and storage (CCS) at 11 coal-fired plants across Europe, including four in Britain.
The four British power stations – the controversial Kingsnorth plant in Kent, Longannet in Fife, Tilbury in Essex and Hatfield in Yorkshire – would share €250m under the two-year scheme.
CCS involves capturing CO2 at power stations and burying it in disused oil/gas fields or other undersea rock formations. It is seen by Gordon Brown and other EU leaders as vital to ensure Europe's energy security, while reducing emissions, in the wake of the recent Russian-Ukraine gas crisis and the emergence of "peak oil". Europe will get most of its gas from Russia by 2050 on current trends.
The €1.25bn for CCS is part of an EC proposal to use €5bn of unspent money in the EU budget on immediate investment in energy and rural development, including broadband infrastructure this year and next.
The overall package is designed to help reboot the EU economy in the deepening recession and EC officials hope it will be adopted at the bloc's March summit. Jose Manuel Barroso, EC president, called it "smart" investment – "a short-term stimulus targeted on long-term goals".
Stuart Haszeldine, a CCS expert at the University of Edinburgh, said: "This is totally exceptional and unique, a major move on the part of Europe. It shows they're extremely serious about developing CCS and it's what the developers have been pressing for."
USD & CANADA :- EPRI to study carbon capture at coal power plants
Five electric utilities in the United States and Canada will host studies of post-combustion carbon dioxide (CO2) capture systems at existing coal-fired power plants, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) said on Tuesday.
As global demand for electricity increases and regulators worldwide look to reduce CO2 emissions, post-combustion capture for new and existing coal units could be an important option, EPRI said in a release.
EPRI is already working on post-combustion carbon capture systems using chilled ammonia designed by French engineering firm Alstom SA at stations owned by Wisconsin Energy Corp in Wisconsin and American Electric Power Co Inc in West Virginia and Oklahoma. Coal generates about half of the electricity used in the United States and is now much cheaper than other fossil fuels like natural gas. At the current production rate, the United States has enough coal to last more than 150 years.
But a coal plant produces about twice as much CO2 as a natural gas-fired plant, and CO2 is a greenhouse gas associated with global warming. A 1,000 MW coal plant produces about six million tons of CO2 per year.
Retrofitting existing plants presents "significant challenges," EPRI noted, including limited space for new equipment, limited heat and water needed to run the system and potential steam turbine modifications.
EPRI expects to conduct the studies in 2009.
