Peterhead carbon capture project secures design funding

A carbon capture and storage plant at Peterhead has been granted multi-million pound funding by the UK Government to assist with design costs.

Shared funding

Shell and Scottish and Southern Energy have jointly signed a contract with the Government to progress the plant’s ‘front end engineering design’ (or FEED) process at Peterhead.  It is sharing the £100m funding award with the White Rose project at the coal-fired Drax power station in North Yorkshire.  The award is taken from an overall budget of £1bn set aside to support the demonstration of the CCS process.

If successful, the Peterhead scheme would enable greenhouse gas emissions to be captured and transported to Shell’s Goldeneye gas field in the North Sea for permanent storage.

The project has the potential to requisition up to a million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year whilst providing low carbon power for half a million homes.  The proposed technology could offer the potential of enhanced oil recovery,  increasing productivity in the North Sea oil and gas fields.

2,000 jobs supported

The funding was announced by UK Energy Secretary Ed Davey, who said: “We are investing around £100m from our £1bn budget to take the Peterhead and White Rose CCS projects to the next stage of development – which together could support over 2,000 jobs during construction and provide clean electricity for over one million homes.”

The final investment decisions on the projects are expected to be made in late 2015.

For more information, help or advice please contact Andrew Davison on 0191 211 7950.