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AMEC - developing CCS clusters
Feature Articles, June 15 2010 (Carbon Capture Journal)
- Alastair Rennie, project director – renewable energy at AMEC, talked about how the development of a CCS cluster in the Humber region in the UK can offer significant cost advantages and how CO2 shipping can add value to the CO2 transport network at Riviera Maritime Media’s inaugural CO2 Shipping Conference on May 6 in London.
Mr Rennie said he was concentrating on the Yorkshire and Humber cluster as a good example of the cluster concept and the added
value that CO2 shipping can provide.
“The Humber is the largest cluster in the UK but it is by no means the only one; each has subtle differences and AMEC has
done a lot of work looking at network design and how you would access emitters and storage sites,” he said.
“The Humber region has a total of 90 million tonnes of CO2 emissions per year and we are looking at tackling 60 million of
that through CCS, which would turn the region from being one of the highest per capita emitters in the UK to one of the lowest.”
“The emitters are in a tight geographical area and we are looking at mainly big power stations with over 1M tonnes CO2
emissions per annum; 90% of the emissions come from these sources. Other sources include a large steel plant which is well suited to CCS.”
“Offshore there is a mixture of depleted gas reservoirs and saline aquifers close to shore. The combination of gas fields in the short term and aquifers in the longer term is very important giving multiple storage options.
As a cluster we are looking to take advantage of the local storage sites first before venturing further afield.”
“The connection is from Ferrybridge which is at the far West of the cluster to the coast which in more or less a straight line
connects all the major emitters. We are proposing to pick it up at 125 Bar probably maxing at 140 Bar. We looked at a lot of
structures and decided that a tree structure was the way to go, with a phased development from 2012 up to 2030.”
“The work we are currently doing is under the auspices of a regional partnership which is open to anyone with an interest in
low carbon technologies and is facilitated by CO2Sense which is
an offshoot of the regional development agency.”
“We are currently doing work within a steering group on a pre-FEED study looking at a range of options for transport and storage so that the FEED work can be more focused.
The outcome of that report will be a schematic for a pipeline network where we are looking at a project by project cost reduction of 44% and by integrating phases a
further 27% reduction.”
“So the overall cost reduction for being part of an integrated network is around 70% in terms of cost per capacity tonne.”
“The shipping option can add value to the pipeline concept. There would be the ability to pick up ad hoc cargoes from the
network for example for EOR requirements or when local storage options are disrupted.”
“There are also options for importing CO2 into the system. There are a number of CCS projects around the coast of Ireland,
UK and southern Europe coasts who will be able to evaluate the Humber as a storage solution linked by ship. Similarly northern European emitters should evaluate the Humber option.”
“Short term agreements for sequestration of pilot and demonstration CO2 and adhoc imports to alleviate problems at other storage locations are also possibilities. For example an agreement enabling an EOR offtaker to meet all or part of their contract with an emitter despite reservoir or well problems,
or for planned maintenance.”
“This is essentially enabled by the imported incremental volumes being relatively small compared to the design capacity of the system.”
“In the immediate future we are supporting the developers who are considering NER (New Entrance Reserve) funding bids.
There is ongoing work to further define the storage options and to support storage licence applications.”
“The aim is to initialize the network in 2015 with the second stage coming online before 2020 or in 2018 ideally. Then we can
offer a shipping import and export facility.”
“The most important thing for us is to be able to offer a low cost base option for CCS by 2020 and that could be a guiding
light for other clusters around Europe.”
“In conclusion we think that these projects operating in clusters are much more cost effective than individual emitters going it alone, and we need to start developing them now so that public money is not wasted on expensive stand alone projects.”
