ScottishPower flicks switch on first CCS unit

The UK's first carbon capture unit to extract CO2 emissions from a working coal-fired power station was quietly switched on earlier today, as part of a project that will bolster ScottishPower's chances of securing government support for a full-scale CCS system at its plant in Longannet, Scotland.

The company said the 30 tonne prototype unit, developed by Aker Clean Carbon, is an exact small-scale replica of the full scale carbon capture system ScottishPower plans to install at the site if it wins the government's $1bn (£618m) competition to build a CCS demonstration plant.

It is capable of capturing carbon dioxide from 1,000 cubic metres of exhaust gas per hour, and will be used to study how much energy the unit uses and how effective different amine solutions are at capturing the CO2.

Ignacio Galán, chairman of both ScottishPower and its parent company Iberdrola, said that the new unit was an important step towards the company's goal of establishing itself as a major player in the emerging UK CCS industry.

"We believe that the UK can lead the world with CCS technology, creating new skills, jobs and opportunities for growth," he said. "There is the potential to create an industry on the same scale as North Sea Oil, and we will invest in Scotland and the UK to help realise this potential."

Speaking earlier today, Nick Horler, chief executive of ScottishPower, delivered a thinly veiled pitch for Longannet to be awarded the contract for the government's £1bn demonstration project.

"The test unit uses the exact same technology that we aim to retrofit to the station for a commercial-scale CCS project by 2014, and the leap from 1MW to 330MW is now within sight," he said. "There are more than 50,000 fossil fuel power stations in operation throughout the world, and by proving that CCS technology can be retrofitted to existing stations, we can begin to address the carbon lock-in from these power plants."

A spokesman for the company insisted that the research project was being run entirely separately to the government's competition, but added that the data collected from the test unit would be hugely helpful when the company does move to build a full-scale CCS unit.

He said that the carbon captured by the prototype unit would not be stored, but confirmed that research was also ongoing into how carbon caught by a full-scale unit could be sequestered under the North Sea.

The new unit was turned on as Iberdrola announced it is to launch a global CCS Centre of Excellence in the UK and fund a Chair in Carbon Capture and Storage at the University of Edinburgh.

As part of the new centre of excellence, ScottishPower also announced that it has entered into a partnership with The Climate Group that will see much of the information gained from its research projects shared with developing nations with an interest in CCS, such as China, India and Brazil.