9 companies including Tata Chemicals have secured £26 million of government funding, in addition to industry backing, to advance the rollout of CCUS in the UK.
UK Energy and Clean Growth Minister Chris Skidmore announced the awards on a visit to Tata Chemicals Europe’s plant in Winnington, Cheshire. The plant, which is the UK’s only manufacturer of soda ash and sodium bicarbonate, is being awarded £4.2 million toward the construction of a facility to capture and utilise 40,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year – the equivalent of 22,000 cars.
When fully operational in 2021 it will be the largest carbon capture plant in the UK, removing 100 times more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than the country’s current largest facility.
8 more projects are being awarded between £170,000 and £7 million as part of 2 programmes – the £20 million Carbon Capture and Utilisation programme (CCUD) and the £24 million Call for CCUS Innovation programme.
In response to the announcement Dr Luke Warren, Chief Executive of the CCSA, commented, “This is fantastic news for the development of carbon capture usage and storage in the UK. This £26m* of funding is critical first step to ensuring the first CCUS projects are up and running by the mid-2020s in a range of clusters across the country, and will help the Government meet its ambition to deploy the technology at scale in the 2030s. If the UK is serious about achieving net zero emissions by 2050, this is just the sort of action that is needed now.”
The CCUD programme is designed to encourage industrial sites to capture carbon dioxide of up to 70,000 tonnes per year, which could then be used commercially in industrial applications. £20 million has been made available, of which nearly £5 million is being awarded today. It is intended to demonstrate how such projects can be replicated in the UK and Europe to deploy a pipeline of CCU projects for wide-scale deployment in the 2030s.
Drax – Fuel Cell Biogenic Carbon Capture Demonstration, £500,000 towards a £1 million project
Origen Power – Oxy-Fuelled Flash Calciner Project, £249,000 towards a £356,000 project
Tata Chemicals Europe – Carbon Capture and Utilisation Demonstration,£4.2 million towards a £17 million project
In July 2018 a £15 million Call for CCUS innovation was announced to offer grant funding to projects which would reduce the cost or accelerate the rollout of CCUS in the UK and internationally. Following a review in January 2019 the amount of funding being made available was increased to £24 million.
C-Capture – Negative CO2 emissions from BECCS, £4,915,070 towards an £11.1 million project
Pale Blue Dot Energy – Acorn storage site, £4,795,017 towards an £8.1 million project
TiGRE Technologies Limited - Integration of CCUS technology to a 200MW OCGT TiGRE Project located in the North Sea, £163,909 towards a £243,000 project
Translational Energy Research Centre (PACT-2) - Led by University of Sheffield / Pilot-Scale Advanced Capture Technology (PACT), £7 million toward a £21 million project
Progressive Energy – HyNet Industrial CCS, £494,626 toward a £765,500 project
OGCI Climate Investments – Clean Gas Project, £3.8 million toward an £18 million project