The FEED study will allow a detailed programme of engineering, planning and financial work to finalise and de-risk all aspects of the proposal ahead of taking the final investment decisions, which is expected to be taken in 2015. It will be the first commercial scale gas powered plant to capture and store CO2 in a depleted gas reservoir.
The Peterhead power station is a Combined Cycle Gas Turbines (CCGT) station owned and operated by Scottish and Southern Energy near Peterhead in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Peterhead is situated on the coast, and lies close to available pipelines that can safely transport CO2. The Goldeneye depleted gas field is about 100km offshore in the North Sea.
The Project will investigate capturing more than 85% of CO2 emissions that would otherwise be emitted to the air; this CO2 will then be transported by pipeline to the Goldeneye platform in the North Sea for storage in a depleted gas reservoir about 2.5km below the sea bed.
Dr Luke Warren, Chief Executive of the CCSA, commented on the news. “It is wonderful news that the second project in the Government’s CCS competition has successfully reached the next step. The Peterhead CCS project is an important part of the UK’s CCS story, as it will showcase CCS on a gas-fired power station – and gas is set to become an increasingly important part of the UK’s low-carbon energy mix going forward.
We are also pleased to see that the Government has accepted all the recommendations in the Wood Review. In particular, the potential for CCS with Enhanced Oil Recovery can bring significant financial benefits to the CCS industry as well as helping to prolong the life of our valuable North Sea oil and gas assets.
The White Rose and Peterhead projects will be the foundation for CCS clusters in the industrial heartlands of Scotland and North East England. Together with the projects outside of the current competition, these will deliver a significant boost to the UK economy. Indeed, the CCSA and the TUC have recently published new modelling, which shows that CCS can reduce household energy bills by £82 per year by 2030, creating up to 30,000 jobs."
Professor Stuart Haszeldine, SCCS Director and Professor of CCS at the University of Edinburgh, said, "The Peterhead project is critical to reducing the cost of tackling the UK’s carbon emissions by demonstrating that full-chain CCS offers a viable and safe route to doing so. CCS on gas will become even more important, due to the UK Government’s emphasis on using more gas for electricity generation, and is inescapable if shale gas emerges as a fuel source for the UK."
"The flexible operation of this type of CCS linked to gas-fired power makes it an ideal complement to renewables, with the potential to infill electricity generation during variable wind output."
"The agreement of the FEED studies for both Peterhead and White Rose also helps give fresh momentum to CCS in Europe. The European Commission’s recent proposals for climate and energy policy for 2030 reiterated that accelerated efforts are required during the next decade to develop infrastructure so that CCS can be deployed on industrial sources of CO2 emissions as well as power generation.”
"Although gas is frequently hailed as a low-carbon fuel, it is not a zero carbon fuel," he explained. "CCS will be required on gas power stations to sufficiently reduce CO2 emissions, but the development of gas CCS projects has, until recently, lagged behind those focused on the use of coal. Despite offering several advantages – such as operational flexibility, cost of electricity and reduced volumes of CO2 for storage – the US Environmental Protection Agency ruled that CCS on gas is not yet ready for commercial deployment. The Peterhead project therefore carries wider international significance, opening the door to a step change reduction in CO2 emissions from power generation."
Technology Centre Mongstad also recently announced a test project on amine capture for gas-fired pwoer stations.