Planning delay holds up pioneering gas carbon capture plant

The government has delayed its decision on plans for a pioneering gas power plant fitted with carbon capture and storage technology.

Net Zero Teesside (NZT) Power Ltd has applied to the government for a development consent order (DCO) for a 860MW gas fired plant and carbon transportation and storage infrastructure able to capture and store up to two million tonnes of CO2 a year.

The government was due to rule on the DCO application by today (10 May), however it has pushed the decision back by four months.

The scheme’s backers claim the Teesside project, which also features a CO2 pipeline network, is the world’s first commercial scale gas-fired carbon capture power station.

In March, NZT Power was named as a “track 1 project” in phase 2 of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero’s Carbon Capture Usage and Storage (CCUS) cluster on Teeside.

But in a written ministerial answer to Parliament yesterday (9 May), junior energy minister Amanda Solloway, revealed a four month delay in determining NZT Power’s DCO application.

The deadline has been extended to enable the department to seek “further information from interested parties” and to ensure sufficient time to allow consideration of this information.

Local Stockton MP Alex Cunningham (Labour) said during the debate on the Energy Bill that the announcement would set “alarm bells ringing” on Teesside on how the delay would impact on the scheme’s development.

But Grant Shapps, secretary of state for energy security and net zero, said no-one should doubt the government’s determination to get on with CCUS.