Peterhead will share €121 million (£100m) of funding with other UK CCS project, White Rose (read more here). This funding enables the project proposal to move one more step forward, toward a final investment decision, which is set to be made by the end of 2015.

Director of Bellona Europa, Jonas Helseth, is pleased to see such progress being made:

“The decision on Peterhead sends a welcome and much needed signal to a Europe where CCS has struggled in an uphill battle. Thanks to such UK leadership, this hill now looks a little less steep.”

“The UK has worked to provide investor security for CCS projects, with measures such as Contracts for Difference. An Emission Performance Standard (EPS) also sends clear signals, which we hope Europe will follow. We look forward to seeing Peterhead and its partners SSE and Shell go the distance for CCS in Europe.”

Finally, Helseth pointed to the ideal location of Peterhead:

“For decades the North Sea has provided wealth and opportunity for its surrounding countries. Vast storage opportunities in depleted oil and gas fields are now set to become the next great venture. The wealth of expertise built up in offshore oil and gas industries can play a key role in CO₂ storage solutions. Norway, as an exporter of fossil fuels should certainly step up here. As we say in Bellona – from pollution to solution!”

 

Scottish Energy Minister Fergus Ewing welcomed the announcement and also drew links to Peterhead’s ideal location:

“We have been robust advocates of CCS for over a decade now, recognising the strong comparative advantages that Scotland has in academic expertise, industrial know-how and the unrivalled storage capacity in the North Sea.”

For more on North Sea opportunities, read about work being done by Scottish CCS here.

And for more on Bellona’s call for an EU Emission Performance Standard, see here.

The awarded funding is part of the UK government’s CCS Commercialisation Programme, with a €1.2 billion (£1bn) commitment of which the €121m (£100m) has now been awarded to developing the Peterhead and White Rose projects. This first step is to enable the projects to themselves conduct the necessary planning work in order to make a final investment decision by the end of 2015, at which point the remainder of the UK government funding will be made available.

The project developers, Shell and Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE), are to fit the existing gas fired power plant at Peterhead with capture technology. The captured CO₂ would be transported to the Shell operated Goldeneye gas field in the North Sea for safe and permanent storage.