National Grid preparing carbon capture arm

The National Grid is planning to offer a new service that will take CO2 emissions from UK power stations and store them in rocks under the North Sea.

The service – which the company said is at "very early planning stages" – would provide energy companies with the CO2 transfer technologies that will be required as part of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) systems.

The government's £1bn competition for the UK's first CCS storage plant is not yet completed, but Chris Train, director of network operations at National Grid, told The Times that the firm planned to be ready to operate its first carbon pipeline system within three years so that it is ready to sequester emissions ahead of the first CCS demonstration plant coming online.

"National Grid would provide the gathering system to collect the carbon and store it offshore," he said. "Our expertise is very much in running safe and effective pipeline networks, so the transport and storage of carbon fits in very well with that."

The company would then probably hand responsibility for the safe storage of the capture carbon to a third party – most likely the oil company with the licence for the depleted gas field.

The National Grid said it was already in talks with a number of major power firms about connecting their coal-fired power stations to the network and that a technical team from National Grid was working with academics at Newcastle University to study different techniques for transporting carbon by pipe and safely storing it in depleted North Sea gas fields.

The National Grid already operates 82,000 miles of gas distribution networks in the UK.

A spokesman for the company told BusinessGreen.com that while it would have to invest in some new pipeline infrastructure to support CCS, it would seek to reuse existing pipes wherever possible.

"As gas fields are depleted, we are looking at using redundant old North Sea gas pipes to pump the CO2 solution the other way, towards the North Sea," he said.

In related news, the government today outlined plans for a new licensing scheme to open up an area of up to 200 miles around the UK for offshore gas storage and importation projects.

Energy minister Mike O'Brien said the new licensing scheme and regulatory framework would help encourage investment in gas storage infrastructure that should help bolster UK energy security.

"There are promising opportunities for offshore gas storage in depleted oil and gas fields and new salt caverns," he said. "But we need to simplify the processes involved so that more investment is forthcoming. Gas storage will become more important in the future as the oil and gas in the North Sea continues to decline and other sources of gas play a bigger part."

Under the scheme, developers will simply require a licence from the Department of Energy and Climate Change to explore, operate or develop a field or facility, and a lease from The Crown Estate for the area they wish to use for gas storage or gas unloading.