Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
7/25/2014
Plans to develop an industrial carbon capture and storage network in the United Kingdom’s Teesside industrial center took a step forward late last week with the appointment of Pale Blue Dot Energy as project coordinator. The company brings the expertise to develop a business case for the proposed network that would initially capture carbon from four industrial plants in Teesside, Sarah Tennison, Low Carbon Economy Manager for Tees Valley Unlimited, told GHG Monitor. The business case will include designing how the carbon will be captured, where it will be stored and how it will be transported to the selected storage site. The project is being led by Tees Valley Unlimited (TVU), the Local Enterprise Partnership for Tees Valley, with contributions from North East Process Industry Cluster (NEPIC) and the Process Industry Carbon Capture and Storage Initiative (PICCSI). “We are delighted to be working on such a visionary initiative—decarbonizing our industrial emissions is every bit as important as reducing emissions from power generation, and has been a much-neglected area in the low-carbon debate,” Pale Blue Dot Project Manager Ian Phillips said in a release issued late last week.
Teesside is a center for many industries in the United Kingdom, including chemicals and plastics. While measures to reduce CO2 emissions have been taken utilizing conventional means such as efficiency, those measures have not been enough, Tennison said, leading TVU to consider CCS as a means to reduce high industrial CO2 emissions rates. TVU is a regional governing board which lacks the expertise to develop such a network. Pale Blue Dot brings seven years of CCS experience to the project.
It is hoped that the development of an industrial CCS network in the region “will act as a stimulus in attracting environmentally-focused companies to locate to Tees Valley, which will contribute to the area’s future economic prosperity,” Stan Higgins, NEPIC Chief Executive Officer, said in a NEPIC release issued late last week. This sentiment was echoed by Keith Brudenell, PICCSI Chairman, saying in the release that “with Tees Valley being a highly integrated industrial region, it is well-placed to deliver and benefit from a CO2 network, which also is an important element in the climate change challenge facing key exporting industries. It is good to see the ambitions to establish a low carbon economy in Tees Valley, which will help enhance the area’s attractiveness to investors, are starting to take shape with the appointment of a project coordinator.”
