E.ON and Scottish Power Battle For Rights to Build Carbon Capture and Storage Coal Plant

The energy and climate change secretary, Ed Miliband, has just recently unveil a strategy to help encourage growth of an unproven technology for the next generation of coal fired power plants. This new technology, known as carbon capture and storage, will be able to sustain 100,000 jobs by 2030 and generate up to £6.5 billion a year.

The UK government also went on to announce that Yorkshire and Humber have been chosen as the UK’s first low carbon economic area for this carbon capture and storage technology. The region has been chosen, because it combines the UK’s largest cluster of industrial CO2 emitters. However, it was also chosen due to its proximity to potential storage sites.

Miliband said that carbon capture and storage presents a massive growth opportunity for the UK. The UK has a strong, established and skilled workforce, which will be needed to deploy carbon capture and storage technology. On top of this, the UK has some of the best potential sites in all of Europe for CO2 storage under the North Sea.

Right now E.ON and Scottish Power are both competing for government backing to build the UK’s first carbon capture and storage coal-fired power plant. An undisclosed amount of funding for each company, which is being drawn from a £90 million pot, will support detailed engineering and design work for the project over the next 12 months.

After this is all said and done, the UK government will announce the winner of this competition. Climate activists have predicted a planned coal station with carbon capture technology will become the “new Kingsnorth” if it gets the go ahead. This is a reference on E.ON’s controversial coal-fired plant in Kent that sparked many battles between protesters and police before E.ON finally shelved the idea.