Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
10/24/2014
Officials in the European Commission’s Directorate-General of Climate Action, Committee on Climate Change voted last week to delay by two years the deadline for final investment decisions to be made for projects awarded funds under the Commission’s New Entrants Reserve (NER) 300 program. The funding scheme, which has been implemented in two rounds, originally dictated that final investment decisions for projects in the first round be made by the end of 2014 and 2018 for projects selected in the second round. Those deadlines will now be 2016 and 2020 respectively. Following the final investment decision projects will have two years to reach activation.
The European Investment Bank announced the completion of the second and final round of emissions allowance sales under the NER 300 program in mid-April, reportedly raising approximately €548 million from the sale of 100 million allowances. The first 200 million allowances were sold from 2011 to 2012 and generated €1.5 billion in funding. Of that, €1.2 billion was awarded to 23 renewables projects. At the onset of the NER 300 program, it was hoped that the funding scheme would spur up to 12 large-scale CCS demonstration projects across Europe. However, the White Rose project, a CCS project run by British utility Drax, is the only CCS project to receive funds through the scheme at a total of €300 million.
The White Rose project will be a new-build 426 megawatt coal-burning facility located in Yorkshire. The plant is being managed by the Capture Power Ltd consortium, made up of Drax, BOC and Alstom. The plant will be a fully equipped oxy-fuel combustion CCS facility and will capture 90 percent of carbon dioxide emissions for transport to a storage site beneath the North Sea seabed. The project remains in the early stages of development, and is currently undergoing a Front End Engineering Design study. At the time of the funding announcement, Drax had expected a final investment decision to be made by the end of 2015.
