The money will help companies identify the next phase of sites under the Sea to store the CO2 emissions from coal and gas power stations as well as heavy industry such as steel and cement factories.
The £2.5m is new funding from DECC’s Innovation Fund, and will be delivered by the Energy Technologies Institute (ETI).
The ETI has issued a call for proposals, with a deadline of 5th February 2015, with a view to awarding contracts and beginning work by spring 2015. It is hoped that the Government funding will catalyse further funding from other partners and industry. Developing a storage site from scratch can take 6-9 years – therefore it is important this work is started now to ensure sites will be ready and available when they are needed.
The project which will build upon the work of the ETI’s UK Storage Appraisal Project, which has created CO2Stored – the UK’s CO2 storage atlas which is available through The Crown Estate and the British Geological Survey. Participants in this project will progress the appraisal of selected sites towards readiness for Final Investment Decisions to help with the de-risking of these stores for potential future storage developers.
Luke Warren, Chief Executive of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association, welcomed the Government's continued efforts to advance CCS. "The announcement today reinforces the UK's competitive advantage in CCS by putting the North Sea at the heart of the CCS development programme," he said. "The UK is one of the best places in the world to develop CCS. Its unique geology - which could provide over 100 years of storage capacity - is optimally located to be used by the UK's major CO2 emitters."