CCS partnership

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have formed a joint-venture partnership that might potentially lead to the development of a carbon capture and storage (CCS) demonstration project in the UK.

Swindon-based RWE npower currently has a 75 per cent stake in Peel Energy CCS, which was formerly jointly owned by Peel Energy and DONG Energy. The restructured joint venture has pre-qualified for the UK’s CCS Demonstration competition – a government-backed initiative aimed at showcasing CCS technologies on a commercial scale.

The group expects to enter proposals for a carbon capture facility with a capacity of 400MW that would form part of a new cleaner supercritical coal-fired power station. The facility intends to transport the CO₂ to disused gas fields in the North Sea, where it would be permanently stored. According to the companies, this project could be operational by 2014.

In a separate project, RWE npower has commissioned a test facility at its Didcot coal-fired power station in Oxfordshire to capture carbon using Post-Combustion (PCC) and Oxyfuel carbon capture methods. The company also plans to begin construction of a CCS pilot plant at its Aberthaw coal-fired station in Wales next year.