In the absence of a national plan to provide £1 billion in funding for a carbon capture and storage demonstration project, the U.K. should partner with Norway to continue development of the technology, British Labor Party MP Alan Whitehead said in an editorial Monday.
The U.K. pulled the plug on a £1 billion CCS commercialization competition last year, leaving the two remaining contenders, Capture Power’s White Rose project and Shell’s Peterhead project, with little choice but to shut down.
“With one stroke of a pen, the prospect of becoming a world leader in CCS technology with all its consequential advantages for future supply has gone, leaving the UK with a few million pounds invested in some very marginal research efforts, and precious little else,” Whitehead said in the BusinessGreen editorial.
Whitehead noted a carbon storage project underway by Norwegian oil company Statoil. “They outlined to me a project they were embarking on with the support and commissioning of the Norwegian government, namely to identify and establish a repository from among the depleted fields relatively close to the Norwegian coast.”
Whitehead suggested the U.K. pitch in on the capture end of the project. “It opens the prospect, with such co-operation, of the UK concentrating on establishing capture clusters that are within reach (by ship) of the chosen Norwegian field and are capable of exploring the commercial aspects of such clusters (such as hydrogen production and possible enhanced oil recovery) whilst a partner looks after the potentially more tricky issues around transportation and sequestration,” he wrote.
Such a plan might “revitalise the CCS momentum in the UK,” according to Whitehead.
