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The Teesside process industry cluster produces 5.6% of the UK’s industrial carbon emissions
01/07/2015
Teesside Collective launches ICCS blueprint
£5.4bn scheme will support thousands of new jobs
Helen Tunnicliffe
THE Teesside Collective, a cluster of energy-intensive industrial partners in North East England, has published what it says is a viable blueprint on how to make industrial CCS (ICCS) a reality.
The Collective was launched in January of this year and it hopes to have an operational ICCS project in Teesside by 2024. There are four “anchor projects” in the Collective which necessarily produce large amounts of CO2 in their processes – steelmaker SSI, fertiliser producer GrowHow, polyester producer Lotte Chemical and industrial gas firm BOC. They say that by using existing and proven technologies, they could capture 2.8m t/y of CO2, a quarter of Teesside’s total CO2 emissions, and store it permanently in aquifers beneath the North Sea. After expansion, with other companies joining the scheme, up to 5m t/y of CO2 could be transported down a shared pipeline.
Over the last few months, the partners, which also include local enterprise partnership Tees Valley Unlimited, National Grid, the North East Process Industries Cluster (NEPIC) and the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), have been consulting widely to determine how the plan could be implemented. The new blueprint, published today with funding from DECC, includes a look at the technical and commercial feasibility of the project, financial support mechanisms, the engineering behind the project and research into the jobs and economic activity likely to result from the scheme.
“This report is an important landmark in the development of CCS within the UK,” Lord Bourne, parliamentary undersecretary of state at DECC, said at a launch event in London today. “The market for chemicals, plastics and steel is changing. Consumers are increasingly demanding low-carbon products. When emissions of CO2 are an inherent part of many of the processes, a technical step-change is required in order to reduce these emissions. In industries such as those on Teesside, evidence tells us that one of the most appropriate ways of reducing CO2 emissions within the timescales needed is by implementing ICCS, and it’s a high priority for this government.”
The Teesside process industry cluster produces 5.6% of the UK’s industrial carbon emissions and per capita emissions are almost three times higher than in the rest of the UK. It is the most carbon-intensive region of the country but vital to the UK’s economy, employing 20,000 people and adding around £10bn to the UK’s GDP. The Collective believes that CCS will be vital to the future of the cluster, both economically and environmentally.
Front end engineering and design work will be carried out between 2015-18 in parallel with the development of incentives for other industries. From 2018-20, the partners will carry out planning, development, permitting, project structuring and design work, while construction will begin in 2020. In 2024, the four anchor projects will begin to capture and store carbon through the new network. From 2025-35, other existing and new plants will plug into the scheme.
The Teesside Collective estimate that the total cost of the work will be £5.4bn, but would require only £1.5bn of extra investment. The scheme will support 1,200 jobs during construction and retain 5,900 jobs in the anchor companies. The expanded scheme could support an extra 2,600 new jobs in new plants in the Tees Valley, and bring in £2bn of extra economic activity. Information on the business case and economics was provided largely by consultancy firm Pale Blue Dot and Cambridge Econometrics, an independent financial analysis firm.
Société Générale has developed plans for a number of viable financial support mechanisms that would help offset the commercial disadvantages of funding such a scheme.
Amec Foster Wheeler was responsible for looking at the technical aspects of the scheme and has provided suitable engineering solutions for each stage of the process, including capturing, gathering, transportation and storage in the North Sea aquifers, for each of the four anchor projects.
Jay Brooks, area manager at BOC, says that if they got the go-ahead to build tomorrow, a working ICCS system could be up and running within seven years. It would just be a case of putting everything together.
“People are very keen on pilots,” he says, “but from an operator’s point of view, we can just build. We are running all the technology we need on a different scale already.”
The Teesside Collective now hopes to build on the commitment already shown and move towards an investment decision.
“The opportunities that the CCS network provides in terms of reducing emissions and carbon costs for energy-intensive industry is likely to create a strong incentive for new process plants to relocate to the Tees Valley and join the CCS network,” the Cambridge Econometrics report concludes.
tce spoke to members of the Teesside Collective when the project launched in January to find out more about the plans.
