UK energy institute invites submissions for CCS project phase II
The UK's Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) has requested new bids and resubmissions to template a carbon capture and storage (CCS) gas-fired power plant with a 20 June deadline. The plant will form part of ETI's £2m 'Thermal Power from CCS' project with the aim of developing combined gas cycle turbines in the UK and abroad. The ETI has refocussed its efforts on building a generic business plan that includes this template gas plant, sourcing potential sites, and building a feasible and robust cost base for the project. In addition, the institute published a report last week suggesting that over the course of building the first such plants in the UK, the cost of gas generation through CCS could be reduced by up to 45%.

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The organisation is inviting prospective partners to submit proposals for the plant as part of its £2 million ‘Thermal Power from CCS’ project.

Last June the ETI similarly called for proposals for a ‘phase 2’ plant, to follow on from the ‘phase 1’ demonstration plant which the government was aiming to get built via its CCS commercialisation competition. The project also involved developing a “generic business case” for plants of this kind.

However, as the competition was axed by the government in November following a spending review, the ETI has refocused its efforts to put together a generic business case.

It said the revised programme will involve “developing an outline scheme and ‘template’ power plant design” as well as “identifying potential sites and building a credible cost base for such a scheme”.

CCS programme manager Andrew Green told Utility Week: “We’re looking to get as robust a cost base as we possibly can for a project of this type. So we’re looking to develop benchmark costing against, wherever possible, projects that have been built.”

He said they were, for example, interested in the development of combined cycle gas turbine projects, both in the UK and abroad.

The ETI is inviting new bids as well as resubmissions by previous respondents. The deadline for submissions is 20 June.

Last week, the ETI released a report which claimed the cost of CCS enabled gas generation could be brought down by as much as 45 per cent in the course of building the first few full-scale plants in Britain.

Tom Grimwood

This article appeared first on edie’s sister title, Utility Week