Speaking at a Westminster Energy, Environment & Transport seminar in London yesterday, Jon Gibbins, director of the UK CCS Research Centre at the Univeristy of Edinburgh, said CCS needed a framework like contracts for difference (CfDs) to get off the ground.
The European Commission was due to fund commercial-scale CCS pilots through a sale of carbon emission allowances, but failed to identify suitable projects. The UK government is re-running a £1 billion competition after its first attempt to award funding similarly lapsed.
Gibbins said: “We need to fund CCS on a similar basis to renewables. It has got similar costs, similar issue in starting up and similar transition issues. The UK can do it by giving proper support in the start for CCS.”
Dr Jeff Chapman, chief executive of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association (CCSA), also said a “sustainable” investment environment needs to be created, adding “hopefully EMR will do that”.
The Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) is looking to bring CCS in line with other forms of renewable and low carbon generation, but it will take time.
Ashley Ibbett, chief executive and director, office of CCS at Decc, told delegates that fossil fuel plant equipped with CCS is expected to be cost-competitive with biomass and offshore wind by 2018. The government expects private sector companies to be investing in CCS equipped plant by the early 2020s without government capital funding.
He said: “It is our objective to get us there and we have produced a comprehensive programme to drive us towards a future energy mix where CCS can compete on cost with sister technologies.”
This programme, as set out in the CCS roadmap, includes £125 million of funding for research and development over four years, the development of a low carbon energy market through EMR, as well as the £1 billion competition.
Ibbett added: “One of the cornerstones to our approach is the competition and the unique support for operational costs through CfDs. This should help with the first challenge of getting CCS deployed at scale.”