White Rose Project

Last updated

The White Rose Carbon Capture and Storage project was a proposed oxy-fuel coal-fired power plant near the Drax power station in North Yorkshire, United Kingdom. [1] It was proposed in 2012 by Capture Power Limited (in partnership with National Grid). This project would have been the first coal-fired power plant to demonstrate the use of oxy-fuel technology for low-carbon electricity at a competitive cost. [2] The proposed 426 MW plant was expected to send 2 Mt CO2/year to an offshore saline aquifer, achieving 90% capture. [1] The Development Consent Order application submitted to the Department of Energy and Climate Change, now Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, was rejected in April 2016. [3] The rejection was on the basis that the project had no route to funding, following the UK government cancelling a carbon capture and storage competition in November 2015. [4]

Contents

History

During the early 2010s, there was interest in the White Rose project taking part of the new governmental subsidies, most especially the CCS Commercialisation Programme and the EU New Entrant Reserve (NER) 300, both of which aimed at funding low-carbon energy projects to scale commercially. In 2014, the CCS Commercialisation Programme awarded the White Rose project with a 2-year Front End Engineering Design (FEED) Programme contract, which would finalize the engineering and financials of the project [2] Also at this time, the White Rose project also received EUR 300 million from the European Commission. However, in November 2015, six months before the funding was supposed to be received, the UK government announced the end of the CCS commercialization Programme due to the UK Treasury’s concerns of high consumer costs and taxpayer money funding CCS before it reached its cost-efficiency. [5] The Treasury cites the fact that no examples of the technology working after attempting to fund the idea in 2011 and in 2012. [5] Unfortunately, since the cancellation, there have been no new updates from the White Rose project, even though the operation was expected to start in 2020. [6]

Industrial Collaborations

Capture Power Limited is composed of three major European companies: Alstom, Drax Group, and The BOC Group. Due to reduced renewable energy subsidies from the UK government, Drax announced the withdrawal of its investments to begin after the Front End Engineering Design (FEED) studies were completed in 2015, but promised to continue providing land as well as site services and infrastructure. [6] The BOC Group would be responsible for the delivery and maintenance of the air separation unit for the coal-fired power plant. [6] Finally, National Grid would construct the carbon capture pipeline and storage facilities in a collaborate effort to provide infrastructure for surrounding carbon capture projects. [2]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Drax Power Station</span> Biomass power station in North Yorkshire

Drax power station is a large biomass power station in Drax, North Yorkshire, England. It has a 2.6 GW capacity for biomass and had a 1.29 GW capacity for coal that was retired in 2021. Its name comes from the nearby village of Drax. It is situated on the River Ouse between Selby and Goole. Its generating capacity of 3,906 megawatts (MW), which includes the shut down coal units, is the highest of any power station in the United Kingdom, providing about 6% of the United Kingdom's electricity supply.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">FutureGen</span> Cancelled coal power station project

FutureGen was a project to demonstrate capture and sequestration of waste carbon dioxide from a coal-fired electrical generating station. The project (renamed FutureGen 2.0) was retrofitting a shuttered coal-fired power plant in Meredosia, Illinois, with oxy-combustion generators. The waste CO2 would be piped approximately 30 miles (48 km) to be sequestered in underground saline formations. FutureGen was a partnership between the United States government and an alliance of primarily coal-related corporations. Costs were estimated at US$1.65 billion, with $1.0 billion provided by the Federal Government.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Energy Technology Laboratory</span> United States research lab

The National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) is a U.S. national laboratory under the Department of Energy Office of Fossil Energy. NETL focuses on applied research for the clean production and use of domestic energy resources. It performs research and development on the supply, efficiency, and environmental constraints of producing and using fossil energy resources while maintaining affordability.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Coal pollution mitigation</span>

Coal pollution mitigation, sometimes labeled as clean coal, is a series of systems and technologies that seek to mitigate health and environmental impact of burning coal for energy. Burning coal releases harmful substances that contribute to air pollution, acid rain, and greenhouse gas emissions. Mitigation includes precombustion approaches, such as cleaning coal, and post combustion approaches, include flue-gas desulfurization, selective catalytic reduction, electrostatic precipitators, and fly ash reduction. These measures aim to reduce coal's impact on human health and the environment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carbon capture and storage</span> Process of capturing and storing carbon dioxide from industrial flue gas

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a process by which carbon dioxide (CO2) from industrial installations is separated before it is released into the atmosphere, then transported to a long-term storage location. With CCS, the CO2 is captured from a large point source, such as a natural gas processing plant and typically is stored in a deep geological formation. Around 80% of the CO2 captured annually is used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR), a process by which CO2 is injected into partially-depleted oil reservoirs in order to extract more oil and then is largely left underground. Since EOR utilizes the CO2 in addition to storing it, CCS is also known as carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS).

An integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) is a technology using a high pressure gasifier to turn coal and other carbon based fuels into pressurized gas—synthesis gas (syngas). It can then remove impurities from the syngas prior to the electricity generation cycle. Some of these pollutants, such as sulfur, can be turned into re-usable byproducts through the Claus process. This results in lower emissions of sulfur dioxide, particulates, mercury, and in some cases carbon dioxide. With additional process equipment, a water-gas shift reaction can increase gasification efficiency and reduce carbon monoxide emissions by converting it to carbon dioxide. The resulting carbon dioxide from the shift reaction can be separated, compressed, and stored through sequestration. Excess heat from the primary combustion and syngas fired generation is then passed to a steam cycle, similar to a combined cycle gas turbine. This process results in improved thermodynamic efficiency, compared to conventional pulverized coal combustion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oxy-fuel combustion process</span> Burning of fuel with pure oxygen

Oxy-fuel combustion is the process of burning a fuel using pure oxygen, or a mixture of oxygen and recirculated flue gas, instead of air. Since the nitrogen component of air is not heated, fuel consumption is reduced, and higher flame temperatures are possible. Historically, the primary use of oxy-fuel combustion has been in welding and cutting of metals, especially steel, since oxy-fuel allows for higher flame temperatures than can be achieved with an air-fuel flame. It has also received a lot of attention in recent decades as a potential carbon capture and storage technology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mississippi Power</span> Investor-owned electric utility

Mississippi Power is an investor-owned electric utility and a wholly owned subsidiary of Atlanta-based Southern Company. Mississippi Power Company (MPC) is headquartered in Gulfport, Mississippi.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a technology that can capture carbon dioxide CO2 emissions produced from fossil fuels in electricity, industrial processes which prevents CO2 from entering the atmosphere. Carbon capture and storage is also used to sequester CO2 filtered out of natural gas from certain natural gas fields. While typically the CO2 has no value after being stored, Enhanced Oil Recovery uses CO2 to increase yield from declining oil fields.

The milestones for carbon capture and storage show the lack of commercial scale development and implementation of CCS over the years since the first carbon tax was imposed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage</span>

Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) is the process of extracting bioenergy from biomass and capturing and storing the carbon dioxide (CO2) that is produced.

The Kędzierzyn Zero-Emission Power and Chemical Complex was a proposed facility in Kędzierzyn-Koźle, Poland. It was planned to combine the functions of power and heat generation with chemical production and carbon capture and storage. The project was proposed by a consortium of chemicals producers, including Zakłady Azotowe Kędzierzyn and the electricity company Południowy Koncern Energetyczny. The facility would have produced synthesis gas by gasification of hard coal. Gas produced by the plant would have been used for power and heat generation, or for the production of other chemicals.

GreenGen is a project in Tianjin, China that aims to research and develop high-tech low-emissions coal-based power generation plants.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Boundary Dam Power Station</span> Power station in Saskatchewan, Canada

Boundary Dam Power Station is the largest coal fired station owned by SaskPower, located near Estevan, Saskatchewan, Canada.

Eston Grange Power Station was a proposed power station to be situated near to Eston in Redcar and Cleveland. If built, it would have been the UK's first pre-combustion carbon capture and storage (CCS) plant. The station could have generated up to 850 megawatts of electricity, enough to supply around a million people with electricity. The station would use standard oil refinery technology to turn gasified coal into hydrogen and carbon dioxide.

The Texas Clean Energy Project (TCEP) was a project developed by Summit Power Group, Inc intended to build of the world’s first Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) clean-coal power plant, a type of carbon capture and storage facility, located near Odessa, Texas.

The North East of England Process Industry Cluster (NEPIC) is an economic cluster developed in accordance with Michael Porter's theories and strategies regarding industrial clusters. The chemistry-using sectors in North East England, where more than 1,400 businesses are headquartered in the industry's supply chain, formed this Process Industry Cluster. In the north-east of England, the industry employs approximately 35,000 direct workers and around 190,000 indirect workers, who collectively account for more than one-third of the area's industrial economy. Companies in the cluster produce 35% of the pharmaceuticals and 50% of the petrochemicals used in the UK, making this area the only net exporter of goods from the country. The area has more than £13 billion in exports.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carbon storage in the North Sea</span> Storage of carbon dioxide in the North Sea

Carbon storage in the North Sea includes programmes being run by several Northern European countries to capture carbon, and store it under the North Sea in either old oil and gas workings, or within saline aquifers. Whilst there have been some moves to international co-operation, most of the Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) programmes are governed by the laws of the country that is running them. Because the governments have pledged net zero carbon emissions by 2050, they have to find ways to deal with any remaining CO2 produced, such as by heavy industry. Around 90% of the identified storage geologies for carbon dioxide in Europe are shared between Norway and the United Kingdom; all of the designated sites for storage are located in the North Sea.

The Carbon Connect Delta Program is a proposed carbon sequestration program to aid Belgium and the Netherlands in achieving carbon neutrality by 2030. It aims to capture, transport, and store 6.5 million tones of CO2 by 2030 using carbon capture and storage (CCS) in the transboundary area of the North Sea Port area of the Scheldt-Delta region connecting Belgium and the Netherlands.

References

  1. 1 2 "Carbon Capture and Sequestration Technologies @ MIT". sequestration.mit.edu. Retrieved 28 April 2017.
  2. 1 2 3 "Carbon capture and storage | CORNERSTONE MAG". cornerstonemag.net. Archived from the original on 22 July 2015. Retrieved 28 April 2017.
  3. Giles, Scott. "EN010048-000820-Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change decision letter and statement of reason" (PDF). Planning Inspectorate. UK HMG. Retrieved 15 November 2020.
  4. Carrington, Damien (25 November 2015). "UK cancels pioneering £1bn carbon capture and storage competition". The Guardian Online. Retrieved 15 November 2020.
  5. 1 2 "UK government spent £100m on cancelled carbon capture project". BBC News. 20 January 2017. Retrieved 28 April 2017.
  6. 1 2 3 "White Rose CCS Project | Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute". www.globalccsinstitute.com. Archived from the original on 6 March 2016. Retrieved 28 April 2017.

53°44′32″N0°59′32″W / 53.7423°N 0.9923°W / 53.7423; -0.9923