United Kingdom's Carbon Capture and Storage Cost Reduction Task Force Interim Report Released: The Potential for Reducing the Costs of CCS in the UK

This past week, the United Kingdom's Carbon Capture and Storage Cost Reduction Task Force, "published an interim report confirming that fossil fuel power generation with carbon capture and storage (CCS) has the potential to compete cost-effectively with other low-carbon forms of energy in the 2020s."  According to the presse release, the 70-page report which is available here.

was undertaken as a collaboration between Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), The Crown Estate and industry, demonstrates that UK gas and coal power stations equipped with carbon capture, transport and storage can be cost competitive with other forms of low-carbon electricity generation such as nuclear and renewables. Critically, the sector will be able to generate electricity at a levelised cost approaching £100 per megawatt hour by the early 2020s, and at a cost significantly below £100 per megawatt hour soon after.

The task force believes that reductions in the cost of CCS electricity can be achieved in the early 2020s through:

• Investment in large offshore CO₂ storage clusters, supplying multiple onshore CO₂ emitters and with investment in large, shared pipelines, with high usage.  

• Investment in large power stations with progressive improvements in CO₂ capture technology capacity, which should be available in the early 2020s following the first couple of projects.

• A reduction in the cost of project capital through a set of measures to reduce risk and improve investor confidence in the sector.

• Exploiting potential synergies with CO₂ based enhanced oil recovery in some Central North Sea oil fields.